CC: XSlayerettes
by Joshua The Evil Guy
Summary: The continuation of 'Chaotic Circumstances'. Dealing primarily with the original team of Slayerettes that were transformed by Halloween into the XMen and now have mutant powers. Issue 2:“Some Xtra Help Buffy and the gang find out about Kendra and more.
1. Chapter 1

Title: CC: The Uncanny X-Slayerettes

Author: Joshua

Disclaimer: X-Men were created by Stan Lee, who's a really great guy since he's allowed so many parodies and Fanfics to be made of his characters, and then here he is making MOVIES too! Great guy, really he is. BtVS was created by Joss Whedon, who's kind of a megalomaniac ever since the fourth season ended and while he makes GREAT characters and comes up with decent enough stories, which is the only reason why I would bother writing BtVS fanfic. Anyway, only thing I could possibly own in this is the time spent writing it and the convoluted twisting and bordering on slightly insane plot. Furthermore, I have no money so don't bother suing me. You'll just embarrass yourself.

Summary: The continuation of 'Chaotic Circumstances'. Dealing primarily with the original team of Slayerettes that were transformed by Halloween into the X-Men and now have mutant powers.

Issue 1: "Whose Line is IT" In the wake of Halloween, things are changing, from the people to the entire world. As Buffy and her friends try to deal with the changes in their lives, they still have to deal with everything else the Hellmouth throws at them.

Story:

It was the middle of November, and Christmas Vacation was looming like a carrot on a stick, but that was what the few remaining 'normal' students of Sunnydale High were worried about and spending their energy on. Everybody else was focusing on and worrying over the Holiday that was already past. Halloween.

A day that would be forever remembered for what happened to the citizens of one small suburban town called Sunnydale on the southwest coast of California on that night. Thanks to the workings of a chaos mage named Ethan Rayne, and the bizarre Englishman's mistakes of drawing directly on the Force of Chaos and handing out Halloween costumes that would change whoever wore them /_into_/ the costume.

Supposedly, the mage's plan was just to turn loose the havoc and chaos of costumed entities running free in the real world for a single night, but something far worse happened. And while for a single night, everyone was transformed into their costume and possessed by the spirit, the minds and souls of whatever or whoever they dressed as, when morning came, it didn't end. The spirits that had been called for a single night returned to whence they came, but their changes remained.

Due to not just one set of circumstances, everyone that wore a costume enchanted by Ethan Rayne and was thusly affected by his spell of costume chaos, found themselves with the same powers, abilities, and/or bodies of their costume. Though they were still themselves, more than half of the citizens, adult and child, of Sunnydale still were whatever it was they had dressed as.

Yet none had quite the grasp of understanding that four teenagers at the local high school did of what had happened. It helped that these teens further understood a great deal more about the world than just the existence of magic and chaos mages. And that one of them was a mystically empowered champion for good even before she dressed in a costume was just another reason why these four found themselves at the center of a growing league of those changed by the chaos of Halloween, or Chaotix as the term would come to be called.

Further coincidence is that each of these four dressed as one of the fabled X-Men of Marvel Comics, the misfit band of mutants hated by those they protect. After contacting a large number of other Chaotix throughout Sunnydale, the teens, who had previously dubbed themselves the Slayerettes, formed the core of the new league and began to spread the word and help the other citizens of Sunnydale understand what had happened to them.

Yet while their aid in the new league is very important, they still have to deal with the problems and issues they were dealing with before Halloween, problems such as demons, vampires, and the forces of darkness. All converging in their small little town because of the Hellmouth, a mystical convergence located beneath Sunnydale that can open a portal that can unleash the forces of Hell.

These teenagers are Buffy Summers, once chosen as the Slayer, gifted with enhanced strength, healing, and the power to defeat vampires and the forces of darkness. After dressing up as the X-man /_Cyclops_/, she can shoot optic beams from her eyes at will, and thanks to the mixture of Chaos, her mystical Slayer powers, and her mutant genes, Buffy's powers are growing and mutating day by day, making her more powerful than ever.

Willow Rosenberg, an introverted "geek" once, and with one of the most brilliant minds in the country as she can crack almost any computer database and has the highest IQ of her class. After dressing up as Jean Grey, codenamed /_Phoenix_/, she's now quite literally one of the most powerful minds on the planet.

Xander Harris, Willow's best friend since Kindergarten, he was the proverbial flipside of Willow's coin as he never considered himself smart and very extroverted and in the top running for class clown. After dressing as /_Iceman_/, he's inherited Bobby Drake's sense of style and way with the ladies, and is discovering that while he has the powers and the humor, he may end up being more than Drake ever was. In more ways than one.

Cordelia Chase was the richest, snobbiest girl in Sunnydale, but after being saved from vampires by Buffy, she opened her eyes and joined a group where she learned who her real friends were. After a night as the X-man /_Rogue_/, Cordy's view on life was permanently changed, giving her Rogue's powers, all of them, as well as putting a mirror under her nose to show her how she had been before then.

They're led by the High School Librarian, Rupert Giles, who is also Buffy's Watcher, the one that helps her directly with her destiny of protecting the world, and who happened to be the one that helped stop Ethan Rayne once and for all.

These teens, brought together by the circumstances of the Hellmouth, forged through the chaos of their new powers and status, they are the Uncanny /_X-Slayerettes_/!

/_Sunnydale High_/

Buffy Summers was toying with her red-tinted shades, trying to concentrate on the test in front of her. It wasn't much of a "test" really, more an "Aptitude Test" for the upcoming Career week. Normally she'd be outside in the courtyard, enjoying the outdoors and 'out-of-school-time' as much as she could, but of late, 'out-of-school-time' was more stressful and more dangerous than running the chance of getting an extra training session with Giles or running across the goblin-transformed "Troll", Principal Snyder.

Truth be told, she wasn't paying nearly half the attention she should have been on it, only focusing enough to be sure she was writing on the correct part of the test instead of doodling all over it. The questions just kind of blurred before her and felt like they went in and if not out then just outright disappeared. A couple like, "Do you enjoy physical labor?" and "If you saw a crime taking place, would you stop it?" stood out and she answered them accordingly, but mostly she just let her mind drift, playing with her red shades, watching how the light played through the crimson lenses.

"Are you a people person, or do you prefer keeping your own company?" Xander read from his test. He, Willow, and (Heaven only knows) Cordelia were seated around a table in the lounge, where the aptitude test had been set up to be taken by the students, each doing their own test and seemed to be giving it all a great deal more concentration than she was.

"Are you asking me?" she returned, "And do you want me to answer on pre-Halloween status, or after?" She gave him a teasing grin when he glared at her with his ice-blue eyes.

"I dunno," he finally shrugged. "Hey Wills," he turned to the telepath that was right beside Buffy, "am I a people person? Do I enjoy the company of people?"

"Before or after Halloween?" the redhead questioned without looking up from her own test.

"There's a difference?" he asked, confused by getting the same response from two different people.

"Uh, gonna have to go with 'Yeah' on that Xan," Buffy answered, turning her page automatically when she finally noticed she'd finished the one she was on. She blinked in surprise when the entire test was flipped over. There were no more pages, she was done.

"Duh!" Cordy added to the conversation while Willow just nodded emphatically to her longest and bestest friend.

"Fine, before!" he exclaimed.

"Well, we're people," Willow pointed out, actually looking up.

An evil grin crossed the mutant's face as he then turned back to his test and said aloud, "So that would be a 'No' then."

"You really want to get a grade off this test based on who you were /_before_/ Xan?" Buffy questioned as she pulled out her homework and started leafing through, trying to find an assignment that she hadn't already finished. One really great thing about dressing up as Cyclops for Halloween, he'd been an A+ student during school and then was a school teacher whenever he hadn't been saving the world, thus her GPA had taken a serious upswing.

That made the mutant freeze, and not in the literal way he so often could do. "So I am a people person?" he asked, confused.

"How many dates with how many girls have you had this week /_alone_/?" Willow icily queried. It was Monday.

Xander's eyebrows shot up, but he kept his mouth shut and silently went back to the test.

A few minutes later he exclaimed with an exasperated sigh, "It's just . . . these people can't tell from one multiple choice test what we're supposed to do for the rest of our lives! I mean it's . . . it's ridiculous!"

"Just shut up and finish the test!" Cordelia shouted at him, getting tired of hearing his constant whining from right next to her.

"Taking a break Buffy?" Willow asked after seeing that her friend had pulled out some of her homework and was steadily working on that, even while continuing to toy with the shades Willow had gotten for her the week before.

"Huh?" the blonde looked up, her expression a mixture of confusion and boredom.

"Taking a break from the test?" she asked again.

"Oh, that. No, I finished it," she answered, turning back to the homework, but frowned when she saw that she'd continued to write while answering Willow and was now completely done with all of her homework. Now what was she supposed to do?

That was about the time she felt the heat of the others gaze and looked up to see them all, staring at her in absolute disbelief. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a couple other nearby students also staring at her.

Seeing they weren't saying anything, and truly bored, she just shrugged it off and started putting her homework away and pulling out a book Giles had given her a couple days ago to read. It was, according to him, a book on Slayers and their fighting skills. Reading through it though, she'd discovered it was more a Watcher Diary on tactics commonly used by a couple of Slayers that had lived back during the Renaissance. Which translated to the same thing, she supposed, but it was slightly more interesting than just sitting here worrying over a test she didn't care about. She'd already read about a couple of things that intrigued her and she felt she might try some of them out on patrol sometime.

"All right, who are you and what have you done with Buffy Summers?" Xander questioned.

Buffy, internally, turned her attention to the psychic link that she had with Willow, something they'd discovered only very recently and communicated in emotions and feelings rather than words and thoughts her current frame of mind and mood.

Willow rolled her eyes at the wave of pure boredom flowing down the link from the Slayer. "Marco promised to have the Danger Room up and running by the weekend Buffy. He and the others have to go to school too y'know. And you shouldn't abuse Cyclops' knowledge like that. It might get you in trouble someday."

"Wills, I've got his powers, his experience, and /_some_/ of his memories, not his knowledge. Part of his experience is how to use the knowledge I already have. Besides, you helped me study, I can't help it if my subconscious is smarter than me these days," the mutant Slayer excused.

"That is so unfair," Cordelia remarked, finally turning back to her own test, until she looked down surprised that she'd already finished too.

"If you want to rag on someone for using knowledge not their own, put the blame on Rogue over there," Buffy said with a grin as she put on her shades.

The white-striped brunette glared at the blonde, sticking her tongue out before just putting her test away and looked about to pull out her own homework, until she recalled that she had already finished all her homework.

"So just Willow and I still have to go through this brain-sucking torture?" Xander exclaimed.

Willow, exactly forty-five minutes after she'd started, which just so happened to coincide with the moment after he'd said that, flipped the test back over and put it away.

"Whu...!" Xander stared, stunned. "That is SO unfair!"

"Tough!" the girls all shouted at him, struggling to contain their giggles.

"C'mon girls," Buffy said, getting up, "Let's leave the Unfunny Iceman to his torture. I feel in the mood for a shopping trip."

"Will! Buff! Come on! Cordy!" Xander protested as one after one the girls left the lounge. Grumbling, he remarked one final time, "This is so unfair!"

/_Abandoned Factory_/

/_Spike's Hideout_/

Drusilla was laying out her cards with trembling care while Spike was pacing around the room, the other vamps, the few that remained after Halloween and the following weeks, were huddled around watching the master vampire warily. At the table, opposite Drusilla, and at the center of the circuit that Spike was making in his paces, was the one vampire that was born before this century and knew how to read before he was turned. The vampire's name was Dalton and he actually used to be a Watcher, not a Watcher to a Slayer, but one of the Watcher's nevertheless.

At the moment, Dalton was pouring over several tomes, all magical directories or manuscripts on magic and seemed to become more and more frantic with everything he read. Aloud he said to Spike, "This is the spell that can change a person into the costume they're wearing, but it's temporary, it calls upon the Roman god Janus. It's the only thing that could actually . . . uh, actually do what's happened."

"Yes, yes, yes, I know that," Spike growled, his pacing becoming more agitated. "That doesn't bloody well tell me why the hell the Slayer and every bollocks'd /_thing_/ out there STILL has their bloody powers! Although I really gotta thank that demon eyed boy for getting rid of Grunide," he muttered.

"It . . . it just doesn't make any sense. That's the only spell that could actually affect a whole town, even one on the Hellmouth. There's nothing else that could—" Dalton stopped suddenly, his vampiric eyes wide with shock.

"Wot?" Spike demanded.

"Chaos," the ex-Watcher muttered. "It-it-it's the only way. He, the wizard, whoever it was, he . . . he tapped into Chaos to power the spell. That's the only way, and for it to be permanent, oh /_fuck_/!!"

Spike stepped back, a little shocked, but even more impressed at the unexpected reaction from the bookish demon.

"Spike," Dalton hurriedly spoke to the master vampire, "You, we can't do this! We can't, there's no way, it can't..."

Spike casually backhanded the vampire with enough strength that he flew out of his chair at the table onto the floor. "Now," Spike drawled, "care to try that again, this time without the blubbering?"

Scrambling to his feet, Dalton tried to make Spike understand, "Chaos is one of the fundamental forces of the universe. If this wizard, whoever he was, tapped into that for this spell . . . It's permanent. There's no way to change anyone that was changed back to normal, no matter what. And we can't risk trying the same spell to change ourselves! There's no telling what may happen!"

"Hence calling it chaos I'm assuming," Spike's face was no longer amused.

"You could kill Drusilla," Dalton provided as example, "Or turn into a good guy, or even be changed so drastically you aren't even yourself, you'd be some other more powerful demon, like the Master or somebody worse!"

"Or more boring," Spike scrunched his face up in annoyance as Dalton convinced him.

"Spike, come dance with me," Drusilla hummed, holding out her arms to her childe.

"Not now pet, can't you see we're busy!" the vampire snapped.

Whimpering, Dru withdrew her arms and seemed to fold in on herself. Instantly regretful, Spike was at his sire's side in a flash, holding her and whispering sweet nothings in her ear and calming her down. Once she was back to her cards, Spike returned to Dalton, his anger evident from every pore of his body as he lashed out at the minion and ordered, "Fine, forget the bloody Slayer and every bloody thing else out there. Focus on Dru's cure."

"Actually, on that, I do have a lead," Dalton excitedly reported grabbing one of the magical directories. "A necromancer."

Spike smashed the vampire's head in before another word could be uttered. "Are you bloody mad! Not even I'm stupid enough to go anywhere /_near_/ a bloody fuckin /_Necromancer_/!! They can control the dead in case you forgot and guess what a vampire is!"

"Not a real one!" Dalton quickly assured the master vamp. "One of the Changed, a Chaotic," referring to a citizen of Sunnydale, "with all the powers but none of the experience or bound by the laws that a true necromancer would be bound by. I got this from a contact at Wolfram&Hart, it shows the name and location of every magician of every type in the country, or North America in our case. There's a necromancer in Sunnydale, one that hadn't been there before. All we need is to get him, control him, and get him to use his powers to heal Drusilla."

Spike waited, listening to the other vampire until he was finished. Finally he asked, "Don't suppose you've got a way in that big brain of yours to actually do that, do you?"

Dalton froze at that, panic entering his eyes, but before Spike could punish him further, Drusilla interrupted, raising on trembling finger and whispering out in that sing-song voice of hers, "There is a way."

"How ducks?" Spike asked, by his sire's side in an instant.

She pointed at the cards before her, and Spike's evil grin quickly became quite infectious.

/_Sunnydale High Courtyard_/

Xander and Cordelia were looking over the list of names and careers posted on the bulletin board, looking for both their own names as well as their friends. The Cordettes were just behind them waiting for their own chance. Charlotte, Erin and Cindy in particular looked nervous about their results.

Finally, Cordy found her own name and read aloud, "Motivational Speaker or . . . Professional businesswoman!"

At the same time Xander read, "Prison guard!!"

Cordelia looked at him annoyed and then looked down at his name and added, "Or construction worker."

"I'm trying to have a venting moment, if you don't mind Miss High and Fly," Xander griped to his fellow mutant. He looked over the rest of the list and made note of Buffy's and Willow's listed roles, and then double-checked the entire list quickly before turning to the complete (minus Harmony) Cordettes and asked, "D'you think that this might be the fake list, y'know like April Fools or something like that?"

"No, why?" Brittany snapped as she shoved him out of the way.

"Cause Willow's name isn't up there," was all he said with a frown on his face. In the events since Halloween, Xander had gotten much closer to his friends and he knew when something would trouble them. And ever since the revelation that there actually were people, namely Bobby Drake, out there that were even more immature and comedic than he tried to be, he'd learned when /_not_/ to be funny.

Everybody else that knew Willow Rosenberg however, also knew that the nerd wouldn't take being left off the list that has to do with their futures at all well. They also knew that she was telepathic now and each struggled not to let the fact that her name was not on the list be the forefront of their minds.

Suddenly, they all heard Buffy Summers shout from across the yard, "HEADS UP!"

Xander and Cordelia looked around sharply, then their eyes widened in fear at the same moment and they grabbed as many of the ones still in front of the board and dragged them away as fast as they could, Cordy taking extra care not to touch anyone with her bare skin.

Half an instant later, Willow flew down right in front of the board, her eyes wide in panic, taking in the list at a glance and then she began going over it in detail, going all over the list once she'd confirmed that her name was under neither 'R' nor 'W'.

Buffy jogged up to join Xander and Cordy and helped a few of the people that'd been knocked down stand up. "Tried to warn you," she told them. "By the way Brittany, that wasn't funny."

"How did you know . . . ?" the Kheran Empath demanded.

"Brittany!" Cordy snapped, "You almost got us killed there!"

"Hey, I figured she'd want to know," the brunette shrugged.

A growl drew their attention back to Willow as she turned from the list, apparently having confirmed that her name was not on the list. A dangerous hot-pink aura surrounded the redhead as she growled out, "Snyder," and then took to the air, hunting down the troll. Though most had taken to calling him a goblin of late.

Everyone glared at Brittany as the girl shrugged sheepishly. "Oops," was all she said.

"I'll stay on her tail," Cordy took to the air after her friend while Buffy instead just started running into the building, trying to calm Willow down through their link.

"Oh c'mon, it's funny!" Brittany protested to everyone looking at her like she was the bad guy.

"Do you realize what she may do to Principal Snyder because of this perceived slight?" Aura questioned.

Struggling to keep her grin from actually splitting her head open, Brittany nodded.

"Snyder replaced Flutie, who the heck do you think they're going to replace /_Snyder_/ with?" Cindy asked their 'Second-In-Command' since Harmony had gone psycho.

That sobered the Coda-trained teenager right up. "Oh. Well, she won't kill him. She's an X-man, not to mention Rosenberg doesn't have the balls to kill."

"Three words Brit-Brit," Xander coldly retorted, "Dark. Phoenix. Saga. Look it up." Then he stalked off after his friends.

"She's also a telepath, she could turn him into a vegetable," Erin remarked.

"I think that would be an improvement," Charlotte commented with a Russian-lilt.

"You gotta admit though, it was a little funny," Brittany tried to defend herself one last time. Suddenly she froze, a frown marring her face. "Hey, wait a second! How the hell did /_Summers_/ know it was me that broadcast to Willow? She's not a telepath and it happened to quick for Willow to tell her!"

The Cordettes all looked around at each other, confused and wondering about this latest development. Things were so much simpler before Halloween.

/_Sunnydale High_/

/_Principal's Office_/

"SNYDER!!" Willow's voice was both telepathically and telekinetically (added echoes) enhanced as she tore the roof off the school to get into the room. Evidence that the roof had been torn off before was ignored as the raging redhead just put it back, telekinetically fusing what needed to be fused to ensure that it wouldn't fall down on them, any time soon.

The green-skinned, actually a putrid puke-green, orange-haired creature squeaked and huddled down under the desk until the desk was lifted off of him with but a gesture from the mutant now in his office. The dark, pupil-less beady little eyes stared out from a heavy brow and an ugly pugged-nose and finally recognized Willow Rosenberg.

Snyder immediately got to his feet and straightened his suit, which was extremely out of place on the goblin-like creature and just made him look even stranger than he normally would, trying to make himself look and feel important again and maybe even intimidate the normally shy student.

That was effectively stopped when Willow dropped the desk right back where it had been, startling another squeak out of the goblin-Principal and almost crushing him if he hadn't jumped back in time. "What's the meaning of this Snyder?!" Willow's voice boomed in the small room and his head equally.

"M-m-meaning of what?" the Troll stuttered, thrown completely off-balance.

"My name has been left off of the printed career list!" Willow informed him, seeming, to his simple mind, to grow over ten feet tall with burning pink eyes.

Snyder's beady little eyes blinked once, twice, and on the third time he grunted as he recalled the information he needed. He opened his mouth to respond, but Willow beat him to it, her eyes going wide with surprise as she blurted out, "An international software corporation singled me out? They want to offer me a job? Oh. Uh, sorry for the mess. I'll clean it right up," the telepath was suddenly the sweet, shy redhead everyone knew Willow Rosenberg to be.

On her way out, she waved her hand across the room and everything that had fallen out of place was instantly put back to where it belonged and another surge of telekinetic energy reinforced the repair job on the ceiling even as she walked out.

Half an instant after the door had shut though, the ceiling crashed in again, or rather a much smaller hole in the ceiling, as Cordelia smashed through and hovered there for a second. Seeing the now thoroughly terrified Troll standing there she asked, "Did Willow come through here?"

He just silently nodded, his arm trembling, pointed out the door and gave a soft grunt. Confused, Cordy landed and opened the door and seeing Willow standing there calmly waiting as Buffy and Xander ran up to her. "Oh, thanks," Cordy said to Snyder as she stepped out and shut the door behind her with a small slam, which caused a little bit more of the ceiling to crash down. Snyder just whimpered and went back to hiding under his desk.

"Hey," Cordy said as she, Buffy, and Xander a beat later, joined up with Willow. "Snyder's still alive, so I'm assuming you've calmed down?"

"Oh yeah, that, just a mild misunderstanding," the redhead reported with a wide grin. The sheer giddiness she said this with, opposed to the irrational rage she'd been seen with before caused the rest of them to break out into shared laughter as they all walked on to the Library.

"So, computer software company, huh?" Buffy asked with a grin, her crimson shades flashing.

"Yep," Willow bounced with giddiness.

"Come again?" Xander blurted, thoroughly confused.

"The reason I'm not on the career list," Willow explained as they rounded a corner and started towards the hall where all their lockers were at. "A computer software company, an /_International_/ computer software company signaled me out and they want to offer me a job. They had to get special permission to set up their closed off booth from Snyder, that's how he knew about it."

"Yeah, but how did . . . oh, hang on for a sec, be right back . . ." he trailed off as they reached his locker and he quickly went to switch his books and then hurried over to rejoin the girls as they, except for Cordelia, changed out their own books, their lockers right next to each other. As soon as he did, he quickly picked up where he left off, "So how did /_Buffy_/ know about the computer thing? Did you like, tell her, y'know," he glanced around the hallway warily, "privately? Not that I have a problem with that, but maybe Cordy and I, particularly me, want to be included in such, uh . . . private conversations to, y'know?"

Smiling, Willow shook her head and answered, "It's not like that Xander."

Cordelia rejoined them herself and took only a glance at everyone's faces before blurting, "Oh, you haven't told him yet?"

"What? What, what, what, what, what, what!?" Xander stuttered looking between the three gorgeous ladies that were his closest friends in the world. He began to feel the panic that maybe they weren't as close as he'd believed before now.

"Yeah Cordy," Buffy dangerously questioned, narrowing her eyes beneath her crimson shades, "what didn't we tell him?"

There's more than one secret! Xander thought to himself in a complete panic.

Willow winced and looked empathetically towards the mutant and immediately hugged him close. "Xander, it's not like that," she repeated, the stress of his panic in her voice. "We aren't keeping secrets, we aren't excluding you, we just don't give you a complete CIA-report listing of everything that's happened to us since we last saw you the moment we see you again. Now stop your panicking, it hurts and you're starting to give me a headache."

"Panicking? Who's panicking? I'm not panicking, there's nothing to panic over!" Xander squeaked.

Buffy shrugged and sighed. "Face it Xan, our best friend is a telepath. I've just learned not to think of what I don't want to think about. And that sounded so much better in my head," she muttered, scratching the back of her neck with a frown.

"Hello?!" Cordelia exclaimed, "Did you tell him or not?"

"Tell me what?" now that he was sure they weren't intentionally keeping him out, Xander's curiosity was piqued.

"About Giles and Miss Calendar," she said, partly to help remind the other girls.

"What, them kissing? I'm trying to repress on that actually," the Slayer admitted.

"Uh, not exactly Buffy," Willow hesitated, only after a look from the blonde did she share the memory of what had happened and what she, Cordelia, and the Cordettes had witnessed the evening before when they'd all gone on a patrol sweep of the town. Buffy'd stayed home, partly because her mother wanted to spend some "quality time" with her daughter and partly because they'd all agreed the Slayer should get at least /_one_/ night off a week.

Buffy's eyes went wide, as Xander asked again, "What?!"

"Uh, Giles asked Miss Calendar to marry him. And she agreed," Willow told him. "We were going to tell you both, honest, it just, well, we were waiting for the right time."

"Damn I wish I had my camera," Cordelia grinned widely at the looks on both Buffy's and Xander's faces.

"I need air," Buffy pronounced, turning and leaving, though class was starting a few minutes and they all knew that.

"Damn, and I wanted to ask her out," Xander blurted out. At the sudden heat he felt directed at him, he noticed the remaining redhead and white-striped brunette glaring dangerously at him. "Did I say that out loud?" he squeaked.

/_Random Cemetery_/

/_Night_/

It was Buffy's night to patrol, and as they'd all agreed, she wasn't doing it alone. Xander 'Iceman' Harris was right by her side the whole way. It was even somewhat enjoyable given their friendship, and since Buffy didn't have to worry too much about Xander getting hurt anymore, a lot less stressful than their first few times patrolling together. Plus, during the whole Battle Royale they'd discovered that they could work well together.

"Can you believe Willow's reaction today?" Xander asked with a laughing grin on his face.

Buffy struggled to keep her own face, straight, not entirely succeeding, answering, "Don't laugh, it's not . . . that funny! Besides, you know better than anybody else how seriously Willow takes academics! She was really looking forward to the test results, so she could know what she would do for the rest of her life."

"Yeah, but c'mon Buff, since Halloween, do you really think that anybody in this town is going to be doing anything that a standardized test has to say?" he countered.

Buffy shrugged, uncomfortable, "Even before Halloween I couldn't be what that test said I could be."

"Yeah, how about that? School teacher, huh?" Xander's tone shifted to something Buffy didn't quite recognize. It almost sounded . . . smug.

"Or Law enforcement, don't forget law enforcement!" Buffy reminded him.

"You're actually seriously considering that?" Xander was surprised.

"I . . . might be. And if I make detective I don't have to wear the ugly polyester uniforms," she pointed out. "Better than school teacher, getting ragged on all the time by snot-nosed brats and teenagers. Thank you but no!"

"Either way, don't make much money," he added.

"Yeah," she agreed.

"Construction worker though, there's money in that. Help build high-rises and get government contracts and other stuff," the Slayer turned it around.

"Better than Prison guard," he agreed. "But seriously, do you look at me and see construction worker? You need all kinds of education for that too, math and physics and geology and I think there's even a special school they make you go to for reading plans and other construction-type stuff!"

"Then there's the automatic membership to the YMCA," Buffy innocently remarked as they walked along the cemetery.

"Yeah, then there's . . ." he trailed off and gave the mutant Slayer the evil-eye, "Don't go there. Just . . . don't. Go. There." he warned her.

Struggling to maintain a straight face, she held up her hand in a solemn vow and managed, "Not going there, check. You'd look good in a hardhat though," she almost burst out laughing.

"Buffy!" Xander growled holding up his left hand, a Freeze ball forming in an instant.

She screeched with a wide smile and took off running, even as Iceman immediately gave chase. "Get back here Slayer!" he crowed, shooting out ice beams to create patches of ice in hope that she might trip up. Of course it never happened.

Before they could make too much noise however, they slid to a stop as they passed one mausoleum and discovered a couple of vampires inside making even more noise than they had been. Buffy, using the few stealth skills Giles had managed to train her with, but mostly relying on the experience of sneaking cookies out of the cookie jar when she was little, snuck up to the entrance and looked inside before sneaking back to Xander, who had put on his ice-armor so he looked much more capable than normal 'Xander Harris'.

"It's just one vamp, looks kind of like a Giles-wannabe if you ask me. He's digging in one of the wall-spaces. Looks like he's looking for something," she told him.

"Just one vamp, you wanna take it yourself and I'll watch your back or . . ." Iceman offered.

"Tell you what, you take him and I'll watch your back, you deserve it, and it is just one vamp," she suggested. She smiled at his suddenly prideful look of accomplishment. "Go get 'em Tiger," she clapped him on the back and then slipped back into the shadows, while Iceman leaned back against the outside of the mausoleum, arms folded and waited for the vampire to come out. They didn't have long to wait.

The vampire, which was exactly how Buffy described him, dressed like a librarian, balding, and had spectacles on its nose in front of its yellow demonic eyes, exited carrying a bundle in its arms, wrapped in cloth so he couldn't actually tell what it immediately was. Before it got too far, Xander stopped it, coughing softly to get its attention, freezing it in fear.

"Y'know, I get the whole demon being evil thing, but don't you people have any respect for the dead? I mean, you're dead yourselves so you should at least let the non living-impaired dead keep the few possessions they've still got. How evil can you get, really?" Iceman taunted.

Buffy, from the shadows, watched as another vampire came at a run straight for Xander's back, and outwardly the mutant showed no sign of even detecting it. She hesitated for half a second, unsure whether to interfere or not, but the choice was taken out of her hands because of her hesitation. The vampire that had run up was already on Iceman, or was about to be if it hadn't turned into a frozen vamp-cicle just inside three feet of the mutant.

"And that's another thing," Iceman continued with not even a pause in his speech, the vampire in front of him effectively terrorized, "attacking from behind is another not-nice thing to do. Of course since I've on occasion done it too, I can't exactly call it evil, but it's still a not nice thing to do. But I'm not a nice person, except to my friends. And you creeps," Xander paused as he shot his right fist behind him and shattered the vamp-cicle turning it into a clump of dusty ice, "are /_not_/ anything even remotely close to my friends. Greatest enemies comes to mind honestly," he mused even as the vampire before him took off as fast as it could.

Iceman gave an evil grin and brought forth both hands and ice beams shot out and turned the ground beneath the vampire into a solid sheet of ice, also covering and freezing over the manhole that the vampire had been running for in hopes of disappearing into the sewers. It's escape effectively cut off, the vampire scrambled around for a bit, dropping its bundle and crawling away from the mutants as fast as it could.

Enjoying himself, Iceman casually formed the Freeze Ball between both hands, just watching the vampire struggle from a distance and taking his time in ending it. Finally, he figured enough was enough and launched the Freeze Ball after careful aiming and watched to see another vamp-cicle be made. To his and Buffy's shock, who was watching from behind her friend, the vampire took one look at the oncoming attack and then jumped up as high as it could. The mutant attack went on to completely freeze an innocent headstone behind the vampire, but neither mutant took notice at the moment.

The vampire, either through sheer dumb luck or an incredibly well-executed plan, landed precisely on top of the frozen-over manhole, and with the combination of its weight and the force of its jump, it actually cracked and broke through the ice and fell down through the hole into the sewers below. For several long seconds after the fact, Buffy and Xander just stared in stunned disbelief. Then they quickly raced forward to see exactly what had happened and discovered the manhole.

"Did that really just happen?" Xander asked as he lowered the ice-armor, reverting to his normal self.

"Damn, I hate it when they pull shit like this," Buffy cursed, looking down the manhole.

"Should we follow?" he asked.

"Hell no!" Buffy protested, "Remember the /_last_/ time we went in the sewers?"

Xander winced, remembering the failed rescue attempt on Jesse and how he and Buffy had nearly been killed because of their shortsightedness. "Well, at least he didn't get away with whatever it was he was stealing," he commented as he went over to the bundle and picked it up. He frowned when he realized that it was actually a book. A very old and powerful looking book.

"What is that?" Buffy asked.

"The /_Necros Arcana Codex_/," Xander replied automatically.

"Wow Xan," Buffy said, very impressed, "I'm impressed. All those research parties are starting to pay off. You recognized this book immediately. Probably from the mausoleum, and the cemetery and some other really impressive random facts that you just put together in an instant."

"Yeah," Xander grinned with overwhelming pride at her compliments, then did the dumb thing and turned the book over and told her, "also it says right here on the front, 'Necros Arcana Codex'. See, right there . . . Hey! Where ya going?"

/_The Library_/

/_The Next Morning_/

"So you say this vampire was raiding a mausoleum in order to obtain this?" Giles asked while anxiously looking over the book Buffy and Xander had come across the night before.

"Yeah, it was suspicious and kinda creepy when you think about it, but I went back to check out the place, just to be sure, and other than tools and a broken wall, uh, what did you call it Xan?" the Slayer turned to her patrolling partner.

"A reliquary," Xander answered. "Believe it or not, my hi-jinx in church as a youth has finally paid off for something."

"A reliquary?" Giles was surprised, "What would a book on Necromancy be doing in a reliquary of all places? Have you, uh, have you tried to open it? The book I mean?" he asked.

"Yes, and I got a nasty shock because of it too!" Buffy pouted.

Now Giles' curiosity was really piqued. "That would indicate that this book is more than just what it seems, its is magical, possibly even a Grimmoire for a practicing Necromancer, meaning that only the Necromancer itself can open it, and the dead or undead can safely handle it."

"Hey, we managed to carry it just fine, it was only when I tried to open it that it went all blue-flamey," Buffy pointed out.

Giles blinked. "Then this hasn't a necromancer of its own just yet. Which, unfortunately, means only one thing," he sat down heavily with a long suffering sigh.

"Oh, oh, oh! I know, I know!" Xander started waving his hand around like a little kid in class. "Somebody dressed as a necromancer for Halloween and now the powers of necromancy of this world are reaching out to this new necromancer."

"I'm afraid Xander's actually right, for once," Giles let out another suffering sigh.

"Hey!" the mutant exclaimed.

"So what does . . . ?" Buffy trailed off suddenly, startling the others into looking at her, and then at what she was staring at. At the entrance of the Library stood a young woman, dark red hair, so dark it was almost black but still red. Buffy and Xander immediately recognized her as Laura Hamilton, a Senior in school. She herself, though, wasn't looking at any of them. Her eyes were only for the book on the table in front of them, which had begun to glow a soft twilight-blue.

"That's mine," she whispered, almost like she hadn't consciously said it.

Seeing that the girl/necromancer wasn't taking any steps forward and the book wasn't looking like it was going to fly through the air to get to her, Buffy just shrugged and casually picked it up and carried it over to her. "Here. If it's yours, it's yours," she said, holding it out.

Laura, pale skin flushing slightly, looked up at Buffy with pale green eyes and then back down at the now practically shining book. Finally she just took it, which immediately cut the light, only for it to seemingly go into her. "Thank you," she whispered shyly to the Slayer.

"No prob. Hey, you know why a bunch of vamps were digging it out of a mausoleum?" the blonde immediately asked the new girl.

Laura's eyes went wide with terror. "V-v-vampires!? Vampires aren't real!"

"You dressed as a necromancer for Halloween, didn't you?" Buffy questioned.

The senior blinked, stunned, but carefully nodded. "I, uh, I went as Anita Blake," she quietly answered.

Buffy rolled her eyes beneath her crimson shades and nodded her head in understanding, while Xander behind her said aloud, "Oh, that explains it!" While Giles just snorted and tried to maintain his stoic Watcher face.

"Don't worry . . . Laura right?" receiving a confirming nod, Buffy continued, "Real vampires aren't /_anything_/ like that. For one thing, the only ones with mind control powers are more than 1,000 years old, and compared to a telepath on the rampage, it's nothing to get worked up over. And personally, I haven't encountered any werewolves yet, but I'm pretty sure they don't run in packs. Don't worry. Vamps are a lot easier killed than in books. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about."

"Oh, good," the young woman squeaked. Apparently she was even more shy and quiet than Willow had /_ever_/ been. Though thankfully she wasn't dressed like a wallflower, so Buffy figured she was just shy.

Suddenly Buffy looked up/_'Think of the devil,'_/ she mused with a smile as Willow contacted her directly through their psychic rapport. "Look, Laura, you know Xander right? And Mr. Giles the Librarian? They'll fill you in, but I've got to go and jump through Snyder's hoop of the week and attend the whole career fair thing. Don't worry," she winked at the senior, lifting her shades and letting a crimson spark of optic energy leak out with the wink, "you're not alone."

As she left, she heard Xander say to Laura, "Oh, Buffy? She dressed as Cyclops. It was kind of a bet, y'see . . ."

Smirking, Buffy raced through the halls until she reached the fair and stepped up right behind the goblin/Troll principal. As she stood there she heard him shout to Willow, "Don't give me that, that story that you just saw her and she's around here somewhere!"

"But I /_did_/ just see her, and she is /_around_/ here somewhere," Willow 'innocently' responded.

"Where. Is. Summers?" Snyder's beady little eyes narrowed even further.

"You wanted to see me Principal Snyder?" Buffy asked in a normal tone of voice from right behind the Troll.

A high-pitched screech filled the hall and an instant later Buffy and Willow were both looking up at the ceiling as the green orange-haired blob hung from an overhang.

"Go to class," the terror-stricken Troll hissed at the mutant Slayer, quite obviously not coming down any time soon.

Buffy grinned and replied, "Okay! Have a nice day Principal Snyder!"

The girls left giggling, heading to class.

/_Spike's Lair_/

Spike was pacing steadily across the floor of the derelict warehouse, all the minions in the room were wisely staying out of his way or quickly finding useful things to do. Drusilla was rocking herself, not an uncommon event, at the table in the middle of the room, her tarot cards arrayed in a surprisingly complex, almost chaotic, pattern before her. Her eyes, while she rocked and hummed to herself, were jumping all over the place, from one specific card at the center, to a minion in the corner, to Spike, to a spot on the wall, to another card and all over. Until suddenly they stopped on one spot in particular and became more alert than the insane Mistress Vampire had any right to be.

Spike stopped at almost the same time as he could hear Dalton returning. Alone.

Scowling at what that meant, Spike rushed forward to meet the brainy vampire halfway.

"Where is it?" the Master Vampire demanded without preamble. Only after he said this did he finally notice that Dalton was empty-handed.

"The Slayer . . ." Dalton began, but Spike had already turned from him in a fit of rage.

"The Slayer!" he roared. "Always, always the /_bloody_/ Slayer! She's the /_bloody_/ thorn /_bloody_/ well in my /_bloody_/ side! And worse, since /_BLOODY HALLOWEEN_/ she and her /_bloody_/ super friends with their /_bloody_/ powers have gotten even more /_bloody_/ stronger!! What's a bloke to do, eh?" he asked as though begging the universe itself, "All I want to do is go on my /_bloody_/ way eating people, occasionally having a good row or two, kill myself a few more Slayers, and live happily /_bloody_/ after with my Dru. /_IS THAT TOO MUCH TO **BLOODY** ASK FOR?!_/ IS IT!!"

"Bloody hell," he cursed as he resumed pacing after his rant. A few more steps and he roared out again, this time overturning some furniture and throwing stuff around until nothing else was within reach to throw.

"Where is it?" Spike asked Dalton in a deceptively calm voice.

"The Slayer has it," he finally answered. "It's probably in the hands of the Necromancer now, but its not too late!" he quickly assured the master vampire.

Spike began to slowly stalk closer to Dalton, the tweed-wearing vampire backing away with each fearful step and blubbering in some way to keep himself alive for another second longer. "There's still a way that we can get her and bind her to us, to YOU! There's a ritual that every necromancer has to do daily! If we can get to her before she does this for the first time, then– URK!" Dalton's speech was suddenly cut off as Spike grabbed him around the throat and lifted him off the floor.

"Wait," came a quiet whisper that froze the master vampire.

"Any particular reason I should be waiting to rip this useless waste of brine apart piece by _/bloody_/ piece eh Dru?" Spike asked after a bit of standing there holding a 200+ lbs vampire up by his throat with a single hand.

"'E can still help us," she replied, staring intently down at the tarot cards she was laying out before her. "'E can bind her to us."

Unnoticed, Dalton's eyes went wide with terror at Drusilla's words, but he then shifted his fear back to Spike, even as his mind began to overwork on a new plan.

Spike looked up at the terror-stricken Dalton for half a second before snorting and tossing him away, the minion flying back into the shadows, a crash coming seconds later, which everyone else ignored, too fearful of Spike's wrath. "Hows that Ducks?" he tenderly asked the master vampiress.

"It's a secret," she whispered with that sly-seer-face of hers that always used to get him hot. Now that she was so weak, it just got him even more frustrated.

Getting back to his pacing he started to think out loud, "But even if we can still make this work, there's the /_bloody_/ Slayer and her super friends to deal with." He paced for a couple more circuits, until he suddenly paused and an evil grin that made every other vampire in the place even more nervous. "I think it's time I brought in the big guns. The Order of Teraka."

"The assassins guild?!" a random vampire suddenly blurted.

"Isn't that a bit overkill?" Dalton asked from the shadows, even more nervous of pissing Spike off again.

"Four of them are coming to my party," Drusilla suddenly announced, turning over some of the strange cards before her; the Cyclops, the Centipede, the Jaguar, and the Skeleton.

Spike's evil smirk became infectious as he answered, "I think it's just the right amount of kill."

/_Various places around Sunnydale_/

One by one they descended upon the unsuspecting Hellmouth. Each with more than 100 human deaths on their hands (or whatever else it was that they had), each a killer in their own right and each the deadliest in their profession; assassination.

A six foot plus man, dressed in casual black leather clothes, the only thing significant about him over other 'Hell's Angels' or bikers was the ugly scarring over one of his eyes, effectively making him a cyclops, a being with only one eye. He stepped off the bus with an annoyed look on his face, before he stepped down and the look of a hunter catching the scent of its prey took over and he began to walk off in a specific direction.

A geeky, harmless looking man in a polyester suit and thick glasses carrying a rather large case with him was walking down the street. He paused and glanced up at the Summers house and grinned to himself before moving on.

At the beach, a small family was enjoying the beautiful day and just having fun when suddenly the youngest started kicking up a fuss and trying to get the parents' attention. When they finally gave it, they stared in open mouth disbelief, unable to even begin to comprehend what they were seeing. Until the older child, a boy, suddenly cried out, "COOL! A zombie!" The walking skeleton, bare scraps of flesh and cloth still attached to it, looked over at the family with empty sockets, until an unearthly glow filled them as it paused to stare at them.

Officer Betty Jordan smiled to herself as she combed her bright red hair in the mirror and turned to finish putting on her uniform. Today she was volunteering at the career fair at the High School, and she was really looking forward to it. She never saw the creature slipping in through the shadows of her own house, she never saw the spotted demon stealthily sneak up right behind her. What she did see, at a tiny little prick that made her turn around, was herself standing there, naked, and staring at her with an evil look on her face. It was the last thing one of the few still-human officers on Sunnydale's police force saw before she died, screaming for help, which ended in a sudden-cut-off gurgle.

In a completely different part of Sunnydale, namely the airport, a black couple disembarked from the commercial plane and made their way to the customs desk. The younger, a female in a provocative tight outfit that was made of dark and rich colors to emphasize her mocha skin, looked around nervously and sneered at a couple of people, visibly ready at any moment to attack anything or everything if it proved necessary.

The elder, a well-dressed gentleman in a business suit with a tweed jacket, was dark skinned and a shaved head. He wore a pair of spectacles that somehow seemed to fit him and made him seem intelligent as well as respectable. He took one look around the airport and muttered a single phrase before frowning with confusion. Then he turned to his younger companion and snapped in accented French, "Kendra, stand down. There are no active threats here. Potential threats, yes, but nothing active, and I do not wish to draw too much attention to ourselves. Now /_relax_/. Consider it an order if you must."

"Yes Wat–"

"Ah!" the man held up a warning finger.

"Yes sir," Kendra blushed and lowered her head, nodding.

"Anything to declare?" the young Customs Agent asked in English.

"Not at this time," the man answered.

After a bit more paperwork, the Agent finally stamped the passports and handed them back to the Jamaican visitors saying with a smile, "Thank you, and welcome to America. I hope you and your daughter enjoy your stay Mr. Zabuto."

/_A few seconds later_/

Joyce Summers looked out the window and frowned as she saw something that she 'knew' about but hadn't ever really considered seeing before. An evolved hive of sentient bugs disguised as a human salesman, walking in front of her house, staring rather intently at what she judged to be her daughter's bedroom. Frowning, she cast a telepathy spell and listened for no more than a few seconds before waving her hands and casting out her magic. She'd been practicing and it was a good thing she was still at home so she could eat and replenish her energy. Still, she hoped nobody noticed the smoking scorch mark on the sidewalk where a traveling salesman/Terakan assassin had been standing just seconds before. She really couldn't help that part, must have something to do with the feedback of sending something to just above the surface of the sun. She'd have to ask Giles about it later, after she'd eaten.

Drusilla looked up suddenly and whimpered as she turned over the card with the Centipede on it, a frown of confusion marring her porcelain face.

The skeleton had stopped in it's land-ward pace and turned to stare with red-glowing eyeless eyes at the family that had witnessed it emerge from the ocean. It took one step towards them, knowing that there could be no witnesses, that there could be nothing to warn the target until it was too late. So imagine its surprise when the youngest suddenly squeaked in fear and then disappeared in a flash of fairy-dust and transformed into a fluttering pink light that the skeleton /_knew_/ was a real fairy, which then flew around to hide behind the mother.

The oldest child, still grinning at seeing a real zombie, began to change as well, his skin turning to a black/green shade and he grew talons and fangs to rival the fiercest beast in the animal kingdom, but still it only grinned at the skeleton. The mother meanwhile began to grow in size until she was a bear! No, not a bear, a Sasquatch! The skeleton didn't take another step after that.

It didn't matter though as the father, a look of protectiveness for his family on his face, took his own step forward and began to throw lightning at the skeleton! When it didn't move fast enough for his taste, he decided to not take any chances and threw a couple huge bolts at the assassin vaporizing it instantly, only the ring and a small pile of charred dust remained in the end.

Drusilla was no longer confused, but frightened as she turned over the Skeleton card immediately after turning over the Centipede card. Spike, a few minutes later, got the same word, that two of the assassins had been killed mere minutes after setting foot in Sunnydale. He considered contacting Teraka to request more, but he was out of money, and the Order was really strict about paying upfront.

/_The Library_/

Giles let out a long-suffering sigh as he took in the chaos that his life, such as it had ever been, had become. Seated in his library, his sanctum satori so to speak, were a group of teenagers, worse /_American_/ teenagers, and worse still, each and every one of them had supernatural powers and abilities that might make the average Watcher scream in terror before fainting dead away. Instead, he just sat there listening as they discussed the fundamentals of Magical Support in the "Community" like it was something they'd seen on the telly!

It was all he could do just to keep from screaming out loud.

"So you have no idea what a real necromancer does?" Xander asked the girl that Buffy had so carelessly given the Necro-tome to several minutes ago.

"Well . . . kinda," the girl, Laura admitted, her expression confused, but every so often her gaze would linger on the tome, proving, to Giles at least, that she truly was connected to it in some way. "I mean, I know how to raise the dead. I think I can almost do it by instinct too, and I made sure to dress as the Anita from after "Blue Moon". But all I got from the costume shop, which you're telling me is the real reason behind what happened on Halloween, was the cross and the wig! I swear!"

"We believe you Ms. Hamilton," Giles interceded before Xander could try anything, "but it would appear that that was enough," he added with a glare at the 'innocent'-looking Iceman. Despite Xander's "luck" with the ladies before his transformation, a teenage boy was still a teenage boy, and Giles, quite frankly didn't trust Xander "Iceman" Harris as far as he could throw him.

"And there was /_never_/ anything like this in the Anita Blake books!" she held up the tome in example.

"Yes, well, I'm afraid that has more to do with real necromancers than what you'll find in any piece of fiction," Giles uncomfortably explained.

"In fiction, animators were apprenticed after they found out what they could do, and even then they had to either do the research or find their teachers themselves," Laura argued.

"Well, uh, as I'm sure you can imagine, um, true necromancers are a bit more powerful in real life, and as such, and more to do with, uh, certain persecutions they received a few centuries back, they've had to become a bit more organized. At the same time, steps were taken to ensure they were limited in their power. Specifically, um, by the gods themselves. Or, as I've heard some refer to the beings governing magic and the like throughout the universe, the Powers That Be. Once you open that tome, and perform the rites of the Necromancer, you'll be entering into a, uh, a contract of sorts. Until such time you are either released from it or break it, which is not advisable under any circumstances, your powers as an animator of the dead will be limited in scope and power, and at the same time, perhaps more focused as well. Instead of dead things awakening around you on their own or flocking to you on the slightest whim, only those that you, you, uh, that you resurrect will be, uh, resurrected, such as it is."

"Oh, well that clears it up," Laura huffed in frustration.

"And if she doesn't accept this contract?" Cordelia asked, with near unprecedented focus.

"Then undoubtedly her powers will continue to grow, but at an unmeasured pace," Giles shrugged. "I, uh, I once knew a Necromancer, back in my school days. He was . . . needless to say, a disturbing individual. I learned most of this from my association with him. If indeed, Ms. Hamilton, you choose not to perform the rites of necromancy, and it is well within your rights to do or not do so, then you will be, essentially, on your own. It will be exactly as you described from the novel point of view. Learning as you go, but in your specific case, there will be no one to teach you how to control your growing powers and abilities. Because I can guarantee you, every necromancer in the world, that has not gone insane or been possessed by evil and certain demonic elements/_has_/ accepted these rites and this unnamed contract."

"Sure, no pressure," the young lady murmured to herself.

"There isn't," Xander spoke up. "After all, we've all got memories and instincts left over from Halloween. Can't you go on that? What Anita knew?"

Laura shook her head even as Giles himself answered. "As detailed as the memories Ms. Hamilton may, or may not still have are, they'll be of the level of power that the spirit, this Anita Blake, was at, at the time of the possession. Laura's powers will continue to grow, either beyond, or in correlation to what is in the books, there's no way to tell, but her experiences will be limited. And again, it is as you said Xander, the magic of necromancy of /_this_/ world is reaching out to her. There's no way to accurately judge, without that tome, how that may affect her."

"I am sitting right here y'know," she sarcastically retorted.

"My apologies," Giles apologized.

"Hey all, what's up?" Buffy greeted as she and Willow walked in.

"We're just sittin' and talkin'," Xander easily replied.

"Hey Laura, how are you doing?" Willow asked, empathetic as she sat down next to the other redhead, Buffy taking the other side.

"Actually . . . it's going better than it has in a long time," she answered. "It's good to just finally be getting some information about all of this. I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me or what. Did you know I can see ghosts? Dead people? I felt like I was the kid in the _Sixth Sense_! Then I heard on the news that there's been an outbreak in Europe and other places across the globe where people claim to have seen ghosts of some kind, and there's still no proof that what they saw was any kind of hoax!"

"Any dead people in here right now?" Buffy asked, not really serious, but curious about her new friend.

Laura didn't 'look around' as everyone expected her to, instead her gaze going instantly to one spot, just behind Xander and Cordelia. "Yeah, a couple," the necromancer answered.

The room was still for several moments as they all digested that, but Willow quickly moved them all on from it. "I trust Giles has answered all of your questions?" she asked.

Laura nodded, now hugging the Big Book of Necromancy to herself, "Just about, yeah. I'm still a bit curious and way confused about this whole necromancer-contract thing, like what happens after? Do I meet other necromancers? What happens when I do?"

"Well, in regards to other necromancers," Giles answered, "I have a phone number somewhere that my old friend gave me. I'll have to find it again, but, think of it like joining the Masons. It's little more than joining up with any other International Club, except with the benefit of supernatural abilities of course, but, of course you would've had those already. And there aren't any membership dues . . . that I'm aware of . . ." he trailed off after that, and went into his office to find the phone number.

"In the more immediate, however," Buffy interrupted, "what would you say to joining a more local club?"

"That HSL thing?" Laura asked. "I've seen the posters popping up all over town, but it sounds like some kind of Community Watch thing."

"Well, as you can imagine," Willow pointed out to the other redhead, in the background Xander turned into Iceman, Cordelia flew off of the ground and around the Library once, and Buffy lifted the long table completely off of the floor with a single pinky finger curled around its edge, "it's a bit more than that."

/_That Night_/

/_Summer's Home_/

Buffy stretched with a yawn as she entered her room. It had been a long day. After the mess of sorting out the tome that she and Xander had found the night before and Laura popping up, after school, they'd all given Laura the complete introduction and tour of the HSL, to most/_Halloween Safety League_/, but in truth, the /_Hellmouth Security League_/. She had to hand it to Xander, having two names, a public one and the real name was a stroke of rare genius. Once they'd cleared a real "Halloween" victim from the still normal and self-blinded citizens of Sunnydale, they introduced the truth, step by step, or just got them to join a more modified form of what Laura had called a community watch program. Which was to say, they gave the normal people a card with a phone number and told them to call it if they ever came across anything "weird".

It was a work in progress, but it was progressing. At least she got a night off once in a while without having to worry about the world ending. Between the 'teams' that had been set up and other more powerful individuals, her own mother included, Sunnydale was going to get a whole lot safer.

Speaking of her mother, who'd been planning to go on an art-buying spree for her gallery earlier in the week, had canceled when she realized that it would be a whole lot easier just conjuring them out of thin air, or 'magically' buying them and hanging them in the gallery. So instead, she went out to enjoy a night on the town with some friends, while Buffy, after the day she'd just had, felt like spending a quiet night at home.

So imagine her surprise, when she saw Angel standing over her bed holding her stuffed pig, looking distractedly at the window.

Grinning to herself, she smirked and cleared her throat right behind the vampire after stealthily sneaking up on him. It was worth it to see the startled look in his eyes as he turned around. At least he didn't let out a little girl shriek, she thought to herself.

"Buffy!" he breathed, carefully schooling his features.

"Angel," she greeted with a grin, more for her trick than actually seeing him again. Honestly, she hadn't thought much of Angel since shortly after Halloween, and even then only in passing. "Here for some quality time with Mr. Gordo?"

"Huh?" he was confused.

"The pig," she pointed with a pert little grin.

"Oh, uh," he quickly tossed the stuffed animal onto the bed and put his hands into his pockets, turning back to her he asked, "So, uh, what's up?"


	2. Chapter 2

Issue 2:

Everyone sat and stared at the Jamaican pair for several long seconds after the foreboding announcement from the foreign Watcher. Finally, Buffy, leaning back and adjusting her crimson shades, said to them, "So you traveled more than 3000 miles just to tell me that I have to raise an army willing to fight and die for me in order to stop Armageddon, and do all this within an unknown amount of time. No pressure," she sarcastically retorted.

"Buffy," Giles chastised.

"Well, we got the army part down, though I think it's gonna be kinda tough to bring up the undying loyalty bit in the next meeting," Xander jested.

"Xander," Willow hissed at him.

"By the way," Buffy suddenly intervened, "do you have something besides 'the Final Battle will be fought on the Hellmouth' to bring us? Because I really hate to break this to you, but the whole Final Battle thing, that's been an almost monthly occurrence since I moved here, and the fate of mankind comes around at least once, sometimes twice every six months. Not to mention me fighting evil happens nightly, and I get a battle royale where I kick loads of butt in the process of getting my butt kicked at least once a week. So unless you've got more than what we already know... not very useful."

"Er..." the black Englishman frowned in thought for several moments, finally saying, "I only know what the prophecies tell me. That you are vital to humanity's survival and that you must gather an army loyal to you in order for us to triumph."

"And again, not very helpful," Buffy remarked.

"Thanks for stopping by, you'll be leaving now, right?" Cordelia rudely asked, while softly shoving him back away from the group.

"Excuse me?" Samuel Zabuto, Giles' Jamaican counterpart, seemed genuinely surprised at the brisk treatment and the apparent brush-off of his dire warning.

Kendra took it a bit more personally; as an attack on her Watcher.

The mocha-colored Slayer near-blurred as she raced forward, probably to knock some sense into her own counterpart, or more likely to blindly attack until her Watcher told her to stop. As it so happened, Cordelia got there first, though she could have been the Jamaican Slayer's target just as easily as Buffy could've been. When everyone thought to look again, they saw Cordy's gloved hand tightly gripping the forearm of a fist that was aimed at the cheerleader's heart. Thankfully, only the mutants and Giles could also see the expression of painful strain on the other girl's face while she was held by the mutant Rogue.

"You /_really_/ don't want to be touching me," Cordelia hissed in warning, making sure that the man behind the girl she held couldn't see her lips moving. To emphasize her point, she squeezed her hand just a fraction tighter until the look on the Slayer's face shifted from one of strain, to one entirely of pain.

With little effort, Cordy tossed the girl back so she only back-stepped three paces before regaining her balance. Before the Slayer could launch herself again, Zabuto cried out, "Kendra! Enough!"

Dutifully, and a little too cowed for Buffy's taste, Kendra stepped back and stood quietly beside her Watcher, hands at her side, and her face lowered to look at the ground. The blonde mutant frowned briefly, crossed her arms, and then consciously resettled her face to one of neutrality. Willow, however, couldn't possibly miss the influx of raw emotions that spilled through her psychic rapport with her best girl friend. She looked concerned over in Buffy's direction, but made no attempts at communication or further draws of attention to her friend.

"Loyal friends is an excellent start, but normal people hold little chance of facing off the danger coming. No matter how much they /_think_/ they know of the supernatural," Zabuto spoke down to, mostly Giles but Buffy was included in the glare, completely ignoring the others. Which, of course pissed Cordelia and Xander off that much more.

"We must begin planning and preparing immediately," the foreign Watcher commanded, but paused when Giles stepped forward.

"Watcher Zabuto... Samuel, I'm afraid that it's not quite that simple," Giles cautiously remarked. "You see, first of all, we have had some rather troubling dealings lately with the Order of Teraka, and first off we need you to confirm your identity as a Watcher, to make sure you are who you say you are, which I'm sure you understand given the circumstances."

Zabuto nodded, and replied, "Of course, I was prepared for such and I can provide absolute proof of my private identity, and it is, of course, standard procedure to contact the Council in, as you say, circumstances such as these."

"Excellent, I'm glad we understand that much," Giles agreed, then continued, "Unfortunately, until I do receive such confirmations, we cannot allow you into our group with just your word and papers or identifications that could easily be forged. Secondly, while we will certainly look into the matter of researching this 'threat' you have spoken of, without further proof or at least some clue as to it's true nature or form, I'm afraid that it will have to, as American's say, take a back-burner to our normal methods of guarding the Hellmouth."

"I'm not sure I..." Zabuto was confused.

"It means," Buffy answered for her Watcher, "thanks for nothing, we'll call you when we need you, in the mean time, we're just going to keep doing things our own way, OK?"

Kendra and her Watcher were flabbergasted. Rude and cautious was one thing, but the people they had traveled so far to help were outright dismissing the importance of the message they had brought. To say that they had expected a very different reception would've been an understatement. Kendra, completely at a loss, stayed quiet and even stepped back a little as she detected signs of her Watcher quickly losing his temper.

"Are you truly going to ignore this warning? I assure you, it is entirely legitimate," he seemed to plead with Giles.

"We never ignore signs of an approaching apocalypse," Giles immediately replied, "It's just . . . things are done a bit differently here, is all."

"Yeah, whenever we're worrying ourselves to death we like to go kill vampires and beat up Willy the Snitch," Xander jested, "not sit around drinking gallons of Tea, capital 'T'."

Giles, blushing, began cleaning his glasses and grunted, "Well, yes, something like that."

"So unless you have a name, a date, or even someway to prevent it from becoming all-out war," Buffy spoke seriously, "you're not much use to us beyond telling us what to do, and newsflash 'mon'. We're American. We don't /_like_/ getting told what to do. So like Cordy said, unless you've got something better, don't let the doors hit you on the way out. Though honestly a phone call woulda saved you some money."

Zabuto just stared, apparently stunned at this casual and rude treatment, before huffing up like a blowfish and turning on his heel and storming out of the Library. Kendra, just as stunned, was a step behind him all the way.

"Can I kill him?" Buffy, Xander, and Cordelia asked Giles together.

Giles sighed and didn't bother answering, just putting his glasses back on and going to his office. Willow finally told each of them 'No' in a strong telepathic voice. She, of all people, knew just how much it took to get Buffy and Xander to consider violence against normal humans, which unfortunately Zabuto was, but on top of that was the X-Men spirits' ingrained pacifism enforced through Professor Charles Xavier. With few exceptions, every one of the X-Men chose violence as a last resort, unless it was against a proven enemy.

What scared Willow the most was not that Zabuto had managed to press all their button in the worst ways possible in just a few minutes, but the fact that in doing so had made Buffy, Xander and Cordelia /_genuinely_/ and REALLY want to kill the foreign Watcher. Compared to that, Willow was almost glad that the furthest her fantasies had gotten was injuring him enough to put him in the hospital for several months. Or in a coma for the rest of his life.

"Can you believe that guy!" Xander shouted once the Library doors had stopped swinging.

"Sadly," Willow answered, "yes. Yes, I can. Although don't take it too hard on him. The whole 'holier-than-thou' attitude is something he was made to learn when he became a Watcher and he had to work a lot at it. It's kind of a thing that nobles once did to make people obey their every whim. Usually in starting wars and going into battle."

"Did you see the look on his face when we didn't just immediately fall over and start fawning over him like some kind of savior?" Buffy asked.

"Did you see the look on /_her_/ face when she attacked me just cause of what I said?" Cordy pointed out.

"Well, since 90 of the time it's nothing but insults coming out of your mouth, I can see where she might have overreacted," Xander gave the white-striped brunette a teasing grin.

She grinned back, but before she could reply, Giles walked back out, his arms loaded down with thick books. Cordy and Buffy moved quickly and relieved him of his burden, setting them on the table, while the Watcher thanked them and then began to pace in front of the long table.

After a couple of passes, Buffy asked him, "Giles, do you seriously think that anything that Zoo-Boo guy said will have a prophecy written about it? Giles, you've said it yourself. Chaos changed everything. After Halloween, even the stuff that is prophecy, do you really think /_any_/ of it is going to happen the same? Although, I've got to say, some of what was 'written' before didn't exactly turn out the way that it was 'written', if you know what I mean?" She added air-quotes for each of the "written"s.

"Yes, well, that doesn't remove the necessity to, shall we say, rule out all other contenders, now does it?" Giles testily remarked.

"So then, what's with the pacing?" Buffy asked.

"Hm?" he stopped for a moment, looking at her confused.

"You only pace when you're mind is going into overdrive, and that only happens when you've figured out that there's actually something worse going on than just the typical Hellmouth hi-jinx," she clarified.

"Like the fact that the chaotic events of Halloween have consequences that will hereby affect the entire world, possibly starting THE Armageddon, if not destroy the whole planet in the mean time?!" the Watcher shouted in exasperation.

The teens were stunned into silence for several moments. Giles resumed his pacing with a sigh, then in a quieter tone continued, "It's just . . . I've created this Buffy. No, no, I know it was Ethan and his utter stupidity, but perhaps if I had just caught it earlier, or if maybe I'd insisted that you patrol, but no, I was completely convinced that nothing ever happens on Halloween. What a fool."

"Yeah, well, this is the Hellmouth," Xander tried his best attempt at making Giles feel better, "None of the normal rules apply. You either adapt or . . . well, I think everybody can fill in their own blanks on the or."

"He's going to make her patrol tonight," Willow suddenly said with certainty after a minute's silence. At everyone's stares, she clarified, "Zabuto. He's going to make Kendra patrol tonight. He's convinced that we're a bunch of teen-adrenaline-junkie idiot kids and that Giles has been 'addled' by the Hellmouth's emissions, so he's going to . . ." she blinked, apparently surprised by what she was picking up from him, "He's going to, and I'm quoting here, show us how it's done and prove that we're either incompetent and that he needs to be placed in charge, or just that he's better than us with the same results." She frowned again, and then reported, "He's calling the Council now, from his mobile phone. Giles, I think you might want to get on top of this with the Council."

"And tell them what Willow?" the Watcher queried, exasperated, "That a gifted young girl at the High School where my Slayer is attending, who now possesses Chaos-imbued telepathic talents that are, quite literally, comic book originated has been spying on a fellow Watcher, who came to me in good spirits with a dire warning that we then threw back in his face just because he wanted to be treated with a modicum of respect?!"

"Mostly I thought you'd like to emphasize to them that we can't do anything without a name, date, or something more than 'there's something bad coming', so you won't lose your job," the redhead demurely answered.

Giles stared at her over the rims of his glasses for a few seconds before sighing deeply and going back into his office, slamming the door, and began placing long-distance phone calls.

/_Bronze_/

/_Early Evening_/

Later that same day, the group of friends calling themselves the X-Slayerettes, gathered together in a booth at the local teen hangout and dancing club the /_Bronze_/. The girls were all decked out in their clubbing dresses, which for Cordelia meant it covered every inch of her skin from neck to shoe, yet was tight enough that she might as well have just painted her clothing on.

Buffy was in a pair of low-rider tight jeans that came several inches below her navel, and a tight low-cut black shirt that covered her arms from elbow to shoulder, yet hung just off the shoulders, leaving the upper portion of her chest bare, and then it clung tightly to the rest of her curves before cutting off several inches above her belly button.

Willow, in an ever increasing change from the wall flower she once was, had dressed, seemingly to match Buffy, though her shirt stopped at the shoulders on both sides, and was red instead of black. Her low-rider denims, however, seemed to be held a couple inches lower simply because this was /_Willow Rosenberg_/ wearing them, and all three lovely ladies were wearing high-heels to match with each of their outfits.

Xander, if it were possible, was in an even more surprising outfit than Willow, as first of all it was color-coordinated, and secondly, it fit him like an Italian leather glove rather than a burlap sack as most of his other clothing did. There was a lot of blue, and some navy, with just a touch of white splashed in to bring out his eyes. What was even more shocking, however, was that when he walked in, he actually had a girl on each arm, and beyond that, they were /_each_/ his date for the evening. Not so surprising was that they were each Chaotix, and were being given the HSL sales-pitch by the uncanny Iceman.

Thankfully though, the others didn't have to put up with being Xander's "friends" while his dates sat around and hung on his every word or drooled over his new social skills. The 'dates' happened to be meeting several of their own friends at the /_Bronze_/ and after a brief round of introductions, Xander left his . . . new female friends in the company of their group, and came back to the booth to sit down with his best friends. Possibly excluding Cordy.

"He bimbo-for-brains," he teased his fellow mutant, "answer me this. How did you ever manage to date 8 guys in a single week? And how did you ever get by being this popular? I'm exhausted and the dance floor hasn't even opened up yet."

"First of all, ultra-loser," she replied with a glower, "you aren't even close to being as popular as I've ever been for even a second of my life. Secondly, I'm a girl, and a hot one at that, so guys don't really care if I take longer breaks than they do. Lastly, I'm Cordelia Chase. They would be so lucky just to spend five minutes around me, let alone an entire date."

"Ah, that's the Cordy we all know and despise," Xander teased back.

"Please," Buffy interrupted before things could get any more heated between the two mutant teens, "we get enough of that during the day in school. Not here, and please, not now, OK?"

Grumbling, the two nodded their heads and muttered together, "Fine."

"Guys, I'm worried about Giles," Willow said after a moments silence.

"He's a grown man Will," Buffy remarked, "He can take care of himself. Hell, he helps take care of me practically all the time. I think he can handle a little inter-watcher rivalry. Besides, I just got him broken in, and you know how long it takes me to train my Watchers just so."

They laughed at that, but the frown marring Willow's expression didn't go away as Buffy'd hoped it would. "Seriously Willow," she added to further console her friend, "if Giles needed our help, all he'd have to do is ask and we'd give it in a heartbeat. And if he were in trouble that he couldn't handle, he /_would_/ tell us."

"Yeah, you're right," the redhead finally cracked a smile, so Buffy turned back to the double trouble of Cordelia and Xander sitting across from each other.

Unfortunately, that meant that she didn't catch the redhead suddenly frown and turn around to look behind her. It wasn't because she was still worried over Giles, no, it felt to her like she was being watched. And not watched in the good way.

Willow cast out with her telepathic senses, feeling for whoever was watching them, or rather watching her. Tracking the feeling, her head turned of its own accord until she was facing the stage and was staring into the eyes of the lead guitarist, who was staring right back at her with a strange intensity that sent chills up and down her spine.

It was only after she broke eye contact and shook herself to get rid of the chills that she realized she recognized the young man on stage. It was the same guy that had also been selected for recruitment by the computer software company at the career fair. What was his name again? Had he even told her?

She looked over at the stage again to find that he was still staring at her. And he was still playing along perfectly with the rest of the band. Reading off the drum and some of the shirts, Willow assumed, correctly, that the band's name was "Dingoes Ate My Baby". Weird as that, and the guy staring at her were, she thought the lead male singer wearing a bright yellow trench coat and the lead female vocal having purple hair was what really took the weirdness cake.

For a moment though, she felt a wave of dejá vu after looking at the band playing on stage, but then shook it off. She was probably just imagining things. Only . . . this /_was_/ the Hellmouth, and Jean's experience told her that a telepath never 'just imagined' anything, no matter how far-fetched or how tired or disillusioned they were.

But still . . . it was impossible!

Looking again, she saw that there were six members of the band, two girls, four guys. Besides the male lead singer and the guitarist, there was the drummer, who she noted had wavy blonde hair and had very broad shoulders beneath a nice looking outfit, and a keyboardist that had strawberry blonde hair and was dressed in mostly dark denim, from jacket to pants. The two girls, Willow noted, was the female lead singer with the purple hair (it actually looked natural in the current lighting) dressed similarly to Cordy in that all her clothing fit tightly to her body, but it was also mostly black leather, unlike Cordy's silks and satins. The other girl, on base if Willow judged the instrument correctly, was actually more cute than anything. Short, petite, and had soft brown hair that she held back in a pony tail. Like the keyboardist, she wore jeans and a denim jacket.

Willow couldn't help the feeling that she knew these people from somewhere. Like seeing a childhood friend all grown up, but different. And as far as she knew, she hadn't grown up knowing these people. At least not on the level that she felt from the connection she was feeling with them.

"Oh my gawd. I don't believe it," Buffy hissed so only the others could hear.

"What? What is it?" Willow, suddenly flustered, asked turning her head every which way, subconsciously wondering if her friend had caught her making eyes at the band and was jealous.

Willow stopped herself, shock radiating through to her core as the thought surprised her. Jealous? Why should Buffy be jealous? And why would she, Willow, want her to be jealous?

"Check it out," Buffy nodded in the direction of the door.

The three other teens turned to look and collectively their jaws dropped. Kendra the Vampire Slayer, still dressed the same they had last seen her, was prowling through the throng of teens, sticking out only for two reasons. She was hot-to-trot and dressed to match, and she had the look of a predator on the hunt, which kept everybody from approaching her.

"I'll get her," Buffy grumbled, getting up.

"You weren't kidding when you said the jerk was going to send her out tonight," Xander looked to Willow. She shook her head, turned to glance at the band once more before focusing her gaze on the pair of slayers near the entrance.

"So much for a group night off," the redhead grumbled, getting up to back up Buffy. "You two stay here. Hopefully Buffy and I can get her to join us before she stakes Mark or one of the others by mistake."

"By the way Wills," Xander asked, "can you check just how many uh/_real_/ vampires are in here tonight?"

Willow blinked, scanning the crowd for the tell-tale thought-patterns of demonic vampires (without souls) in the same instant and replied, "Three. Two badly dressed guys talking to the Cordettes over there, and the girl that Kendra is stalking right now. Uh... correction, Kendra is stalking Mark, who is being hit on by the real vampire."

"Oh this should be good," Xander grinned and leaned back to enjoy the show.

"You go find out what Mark is doing," Buffy ordered Willow, "I'll divert crazy-girl to the other two vamps. Those two, right?"

/_ Yep _/ came the telepathic reply as Willow moved off to intercept the Chaotix vampire.

Buffy shouldered her way, gently, through the crowd and barely managed to intercept Kendra before the Jamaican Slayer had gotten to Mark and his apparent "date" for the evening. Which was extremely odd since he had a steady girlfriend who was on the dance floor not too far away.

"You!" Kendra nearly shouted once she recognized Buffy as the one that was holding her back and pushing her away from Mark, the vampire she'd been hunting.

"Yeah, me. Look, the kid you were eyeballing? Not a vamp. He's what we like to call here in the States, a Goth. It's ordinary humans that like to dress like vampires. Those two," she briefly pointed, "are vamps. Now let's play the... Hey!" Buffy shouted as Kendra shot forward towards the two vamps that had been pointed out, but thankfully Buffy's reactions were just as quick as she stopped the other Slayer before she got too far, grabbing her wrist.

Kendra stopped mostly in shock as she looked down at her held wrist, feeling the raw strength in that grip and looking fearfully up at her predecessor. Her encounter with Cordelia earlier that day was still something that confused and frightened her. After all, in Kendra's world, there was no greater power than the power of the Slayer. And something or someone that could grab and hold the active Slayer with such ease scared the crap out of her.

"Gawd, would you just wait for half a second!" Buffy raged, not even noticing the surprise and fear in her counterpart at the moment.

"I am trying to do my duty!" Kendra growled, trying unsuccessfully to squirm out of Buffy's grip. "I do not shirk my destiny as you have. I am de Vampire Slayer, and I will slay dos vampires and save de world, no matter what you say!"

"OK, seriously, need to keep your voice down, and secondly," Buffy practically dragged the other Slayer off the dance floor against one of the pillars so they were mostly out of the crowd, "there's doing your duty and then there's being just plain stupid while you try to one-up me. What were you going to do anyway? We're in the middle of a very crowded building. Were you just going to walk up to them, announce you're the Slayer, and expect them to just stand there casually while you pulled your stake out and shoved it into their chests? And maybe you even expected everybody in here to ignore it and say nothing of two vampires dusting in front of their eyes, or would you actually be deluded enough to believe that everyone here would be grateful and make you a national hero? I don't know how they do things in Jamaica, but we don't go around dusting vamps in front of a dozen civilian witnesses."

"And you would just let dem kill dos innocents instead?" Kendra challenged.

"Well while we don't go around killing vamps in front of people, guess what? Unless there are enough of them to control the panic, they don't go around killing people in front of witnesses either." Buffy sarcastically retorted.

"What I do is I identify them, I track them, and before they kill anybody, I follow them to some secluded area and /_then_/ I make with the slaying. Now, would you like to try it my way, or would you rather put your way of walking up and staking blindly to the test?" the blonde questioned.

Kendra scowled, but she just nodded and Buffy finally released her.

"Very well, we'll do it your way. For now," the Jamaican glared at the California blonde.

"Now as I was saying before you went off half-cocked," Buffy adjusted her red-tint sunglasses as she lectured, "Let's play the jealous girlfriends routine. Both of us..." she suddenly trailed off as her eyes glazed over, to Kendra it seemed as if she were listening to a voice that was not there. Until Buffy suddenly looked up, as though startled, in the direction the vamps had been in, only they weren't there anymore.

"Shit. Plan B, track them, fast, and kill them at your first opportunity," Buffy ordered while leaving the other Slayer there against the pillar. She was following Willow's instructions on which way the demonic vampires were headed, but the crowd was moving against her at the moment, making things more difficult than it should've been. She'd just made it to the back door in time to see one of the girls that had been with the vamps go through it.

Growling to herself, her glasses momentarily flashing red as her temper flared, Buffy started tearing through the crowd and just caught the door just as it was about to close. A heartbeat later she was through it and in the alleyway, where the two vamps were trying to sweet talk their soon-to-be victims into a round of necking. Buffy wasn't gonna let that happen.

Kendra was literally right behind the mutant Slayer, and she was as ready as she ever was to slay some vampires, but even she, being the current Slayer, was not prepared for what happened next.

"Hey bozos!" Buffy shouted out loud, drawing the vampires' attention away from their would-be victims, "Party's over! Now let... oh. Hey there girls, didn't realize who you were. Sorry for interrupting, carry on."

The two vampires looked at each other in confusion after that, then shrugged and one of them growled out in the Slayers direction, "Whatever. I always did enjoy it when the meat delivered itself."

"Oh, for that I hope they make it hurt," Buffy commented.

"Huh?" the other vamp asked, turning back to the still quiet girls behind them.

Only to find a pair of red eyes freezing him to the spot, framed in blue hair and white armor. The next thing the vampire knew, his head was cut off and he was turning to dust. At the sound of his companion dusting, the first vampire turned back around, only to be set on fire with a glance from the blonde in the black goth-dress.

For several moments after the vampires were dusted, the alley was unusually quiet. Behind her, Buffy could hear Kendra moving. Typically, instead of stuttering or fainting or panicking or anything like that, the Jamaican Slayer exploded into violent action, diving forward to attach what she viewed as threats. In her eyes the blue-haired Chaotix was a demon of some kind and the goth girl was some kind of evil witch.

Buffy, clued in to how a Slayer's mind works, and having experienced her counterpart's proclivity towards misconceptions already, she was already acting before Kendra even started to move. "Down girl!" she ordered as she physically held the other Slayer back. It was surprisingly a lot easier than it should've been, she knew.

"Don't mind her, she's new and a little overeager sometimes," Buffy explained to the other Chaotix. They just glanced at the two Slayer, while the blue-haired one nodded stiffly, before reverting back to a more normal-appearance and the two walked back into the Bronze.

"What are you doing?!" Kendra screamed. "They're demons and you're letting them get away?! What kind of Slayer are you!!"

She finally managed to wrangle herself free, though actually, Buffy let her go once she was sure no one else was in the alley.

"All right," Buffy got in the other girl's face, "lets get something straight here. You are a Slayer, I'll give you that. But this is my town, and I have more experience with how things go down around here. You and your Watcher are not allowed to come here, no matter your intentions, and start making like your the saviors of mankind. You also cannot attack everybody and every /_thing/_ that looks the slightest bit non-human. Hate to break it to you, but in this town, even some of the things that /_look_/ demonic are on our side."

"You are /_no_/ Slayer!" Kendra hissed, like it was some kind of insult.

"You really wanna do this?" Buffy asked.

Kendra didn't know what she meant, but looking at her again, the Jamaican realized she actually did. Instead of answering, she just nodded and stepped back, her body tense and her eyes angry. Buffy just stood there, neither taking the offense or the defense, but ready nevertheless.

Kendra moved first, as Buffy knew she would, a sharp fast jab to the face. Buffy simply leaned her body to the side, letting the fist go by, and absently noting at least six different openings that she could take advantage of with a single move to end the fight permanently. Another twenty openings that would take two or more moves to kill her opponent, and over a hundred that would lead to something you'd see more in the movies or on TV, a lot of fancy footwork and fighting that would lead to a few bruises and nothing more. The blonde Slayer did nothing, resuming her former position when Kendra pulled her fist back.

Barely a full heartbeat after the first punch was thrown, Kendra threw another. Buffy ducked around that one to, and the follow-up roundhouse kick. The leg-sweep she jumped over and the frontal body kick she stepped back and two feet to the left to avoid. Another dozen punches, five more kicks and an attempt at grappling that wound up with Kendra running face-first into the wall, Buffy was still standing in the same spot she started at and Kendra was out of breath.

"Why do you not fight back?" the out-of-breath Slayer demanded.

"Why do you fight at all?" Buffy retorted.

"It is my destiny, I am the Slayer, it is what I do," Kendra replied by rote.

"It's your destiny to kill innocent girls who defended themselves from a pair of vampires? It's your destiny to fight another Slayer and try to kill her just because she stopped you from killing those innocent girls? It's your destiny to have a stick the size of Big Ben up your butt? As for what you do... you're not very good at it, are you?"

That had the desired effect of pissing the Jamaican teenager off aplenty and had her seeing so much red Buffy was briefly surprised that her eyes /_didn't_/ flash red the way her own did. Kendra dove forward at a speed that would blur to the normal human eye. To Buffy, she knew she couldn't avoid it, so she had to block, or be knocked back. She chose to end it quicker than that.

One instant the mocha-skinned teen was running forward faster and with greater strength than even she knew she had. The next, she was being held several inches off the ground and was being choked by strength greater than she'd ever imagined and looking into a pair of crimson eyes that looked like they could blast her to pieces as well as look at her.

"News flash honey," Buffy hissed back at the foreign Slayer, "there are things in this town that are a /_lot_/ stronger than a Slayer. Not all of them are as friendly as me and the others have been."

"What... are... you?" Kendra gasped out, only just getting enough air to breathe, and talk.

"I used to be the weirdest freak in town. I used to be the one girl in all the world that was supposed to save it from the demons, the vampires, and the forces of darkness. Now..." Buffy sighed and put the other girl back on her feet. "Now, I'm just one of several hundred freaks that were changed by Halloween. By that wave of Chaos your Watcher talked about. We don't want the Watcher's Council looking any closer than it already is into Sunnydale or the Hellmouth. Things are complicated enough without having the Brits deciding they need to start sending sweeper teams to hunt us all down and try either capturing us for experimentation, or pegging us for extinction."

"What are you?" Kendra repeated, rubbing her neck and stepping further back from the girl she had thought was the previous Slayer.

"I am a mutant. Specifically that is. We've come up with a new term for the general quantity; Chaotix. Touched by the Force of Chaos, changed irrevocably, and from this day forth I am whatever the hell I want to be, no matter what anybody else tells me," Buffy answered honestly from the heart.

"Demon?"

Buffy snorted. "You have a very limited view of the world, don't you? It's always either human or demon with you, isn't it? Fine, if you must know, I'm human. Just with some extra thrown in, on top of being the Slayer that is."

"Extra?"

In demonstration, Buffy looked down the alley and casually noticed another vampire trying to sneak up behind them, and this one was a real demonic vampire rather than one of the Chaotix Vamps that were popping up here and there. Once he was out in the open enough, she let loose with an optic blast that practically atomized his chest cavity, heart included, dusting him instantly after that.

Kendra turned to look, her eyes wide with shock, and noticed the dusting vampire. Looking back to Buffy, who was calmly putting her shades back on, her mouth dropped open to further lament her shock.

Buffy herself just shrugged and commented, "Hey, it's faster than using a stake."

At that, Kendra had to agree, but shooting beams of red light out of the eyes, she'd never heard of such a thing. And typically, until her Watcher explained otherwise, everything that she didn't already know about was cataloged as 'demon' in her mind. But this was the other Slayer and other than being typical of Americans and being very rude and ungrateful, she and her friends had done nothing demonic whatsoever.

Also she was still in a state of shock, and so allowed Buffy to pull her back into the club.

Meanwhile, back inside, Willow was staring up at the live band again, the oddest sense of deja vu not allowing her to drop the matter. There was just something so familiar about them, and not just the guitarist, but all of them.

Finally the time came for the band to take a break, another group coming up to take their place. Willow absently told Xander and Cordelia that she'd be back in a minute after checking on something, then she quickly got up and followed the band as they went back stage. A minute later, she caught up with them, only to see the guitarist slipping out the back door. Frowning in confusion, she quickly followed.

They stood in a semi-circle around the door, waiting for her. The guitarist that had saved her life, potentially anyway, stepped forward and almost growled out, "Why are you following us?"

"Uh..." Willow was at a loss of what to do, so she decided to borrow from Buffy's handbook, and returned with a simple, "Huh?"

"Why are you following us?" the purple-haired female lead-singer snapped out in a familiar sounding accent. A British accent, the redhead telepath realize a moment later.

"Why would I follow you?" Willow innocently asked back, bringing up some of her old shyness at the same time to further help her. "Aren't you guys the band that was just playing? I... I came out here be...b-because I, I... I, uh..."

"Stop with the lying," the red-haired keyboardist spoke with a Scottish accent, "Yer not too good at it anyway lass."

"What do you want?" the tall, broad-shouldered very, very handsome drummer demanded.

"W-want?" Willow stuttered, playing up the shy innocent lost little girl.

Rather than hound her with another question, the guitarist, now right in front of her, just took another step forward and held up his left hand in front of her face, not to hit her but more like to show her his fist.

/_SCHNIKT!_/

A fist that was suddenly sporting three foot-long razor sharp metal claws, sprouting from between the knuckles of his fingers. Willow's eyes went wide at both the implications and the very sight of what she was seeing, literally right in front of her eyes.

"Why?" was all his soft growling voice said to her.

Willow wanted to answer. She actually did, wanted to tell them how excited she was to have found them and to explain to them what had happened and everything else, but all she could do was stare, wide-eyed at the claws. Her mouth worked up and down, gaping like a fish, but no sounds were forthcoming.

Finally, he snorted, withdrew the claws and stepped back.

"Don't you think that was a bit much Oz?" the lead male-singer in the yellow trench coat whispered to the guitarist.

"Nah, probably wasn't enough," 'Oz' growled back, not taking his gaze from the redhead.

"Who..." Willow's voice croaked, "Who are you people?"

"We're the one asking the questions luv," the purple-haired girl snapped. "Who are you first?"

"W-will... Willow Rosenberg," she answered. "I... I, uh, I dressed up as Jean Grey for Halloween. We... we thought there weren't any other X-men, or people that dressed up as X-men, on Halloween. Why... why didn't you answer your communicators when B... when Cyclops called out? Why didn't you come out sooner? Who did you all dress up as, though I think I can take a few guesses, but...?"

The band took a nervous look at each other before the purple-haired girl snapped out again, "I thought I told you we were asking the questions!"

Willow, not wanting a moment like this to be wasted, telepathically reached out to all her friends, most especially Buffy, and psi-shouted/_ Guys! Get out to the alley behind the Bronze! It's really, really important! _/

Inside the club, Xander and Cordelia immediately looked up, shared a glance and then scrambled to the door, Xander apologizing profusely to his dates before donning his ice armor and racing through the crowd, whereas Cordy just flew over them without a care. Buffy, who was actually still in the side-alley with Kendra, just stopped, and then turned and raced alongside the building to the back edge as fast as her Slayer muscles could move her.

In the same instant, however, the English-accent purple-haired girl exclaimed to all the others, "Shit! Guys, she just called for reinforcements! We gotta get outta here!"

"No, wait, it's not like that," Willow tried to explain.

"Shut up!" the one who had now undoubtedly dressed as /_Psylocke_/ screamed at her.

Moments later, why the group was still scrambling to move, Cordy flew over the edge of the roof and hovered above them, glad she'd gone for wearing ultra-tight pants instead of miniskirts. Xander came around in full Iceman form from the open end of the alley, and both Buffy and Kendra vaulted the fence that linked to the side-alley, Buffy's glasses still off so her glowing red eyes were clearly visible.

"See, I told you I wasn't the only one that got mixed up like that," the tall boy in the yellow trench coat slapped Oz's back in a berating manner.

"We outnumber you," was all the young man said, the claws from both hands unsheathing with a unique sound. The X-Slayerettes all froze at that sound and did multiple double-takes at the group they'd come to surround.

"What the hell?" Buffy asked, stunned.

"Let's get out of here," the cute brunette in denim panicked, grabbing the redhead guy beside her, then they began to sink into the ground as she phased them through the concrete.

"Wait!" Willow screamed, then she exerted her telekinesis to the level that she was surrounded by a hot-pink aura and began to float above the pavement. "See! You aren't the only ones! We dressed up as X-men too! We're friends!"

"Doubtful," Oz growled at her.

Despite their reluctant appearance, Willow's words did stop the denim-clad pair from running any further, and it also had the side effect of making the rest of the band assume it was time to take the gloves off as the saying goes.

The tall handsome drummer took off his jacket and released a catch or something and immediately a broad and beautiful pair of angel-white feathered wings sprouted from his back. The purple-haired girl clenched both her fists and with a flash, blades of pure energy sprung from her hands, crackling with psionic force. The boy in the yellow trench coat held up his own hands, popping off a few multi-colored firecrackers, but the threat was clear all the same. The denim-clad pair stood next to each other, but from what Willow had already seen from them, it was pretty clear that the could handle themselves just as well, if not better as some of the others.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Xander shouted out, holding up his hands in a non-threatening manner. "What the heck? You guys dressed up as X-men too! COOL!"

"So let me guess," the girl that had been Psylocke commented, "Jean Grey, Iceman, Cyclops and..." she paused as she looked further up and saw Cordelia with her brunette and white-striped hair, "and Rogue. Right? Whose the other one?"

"Oh, she's Kendra, wasn't here on Halloween, just visiting," Buffy brushed off the other Slayer, before stepping forward and with more command in her voice, "You guys are the band; "Dingoes Ate My Baby" right? Name aside, I've seen you around before. You aren't bad guys, and the X-men are not killers or thugs. We don't fight unless we have absolutely no other choice. Now stand down."

"Yep, she dressed as old Red Eye alright," Oz grunted, sheathing his claws for the moment.

"How come you guys didn't answer Cyclops' distress call on Halloween?" Buffy wanted to know. "And why haven't you come out to the HSL sooner? We could've used your help you know?"

"Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we don't want to fight!" the winged drummer shouted back at her.

"You kinda seemed raring to go a second ago," Cordy commented as she slowly landed beside the now grounded Willow.

"We've been attacked several times already," the redhead keyboardist explained. "We've had to defend ourselves from lots of different people and... things."

"So have we," Buffy pointed out, "Why do you think we started the HSL in the first place? So that everybody can have a support system. Nobody makes anybody do anything they don't want or are not willing to do. We're still building our base outside of town, we have half the town on our membership roster already, but no more than fifty to a hundred working on that base. You could have at least let us know about you so that we could offer both protection... and an explanation as to what happened to you. Maybe even offer somethings to help you in controlling your abilities if you want. Since you say you've been attacked, obviously you've seen a few that either couldn't control their abilities, or let having those abilities go to their heads."

"And do you realize how many major league hotties there are in this town now after Halloween?" Xander pointed out excitedly.

"Shut up dweeb boy!" Cordy snapped at the ice mutant.

"So what did happen then?" the winged drummer crossed his arms and smirked, not believing anything they'd said so far.

"A chaos mage, named Ethan, and the one that sold us our costumes, used a spell to turn everybody into their costumes, summoning the spirits of the people, or other things, we dressed as from other dimensions and universes," Willow explained. "To do that, he tapped into the very Force of Chaos itself, making the changes the spirits did to us, permanent. The powers, the memories, everything... It won't go away. We're... we're really mutants."

"Well, that's not so bad," the boy in the yellow trench coat blurted out.

"Yeah, you're the only one that actually liked this Devon," the cute brunette argued.

"Well who doesn't want super powers when they've already got them?" Devon argued back, only to be answered when Buffy, Cordelia, Oz, and the entire rest of the band raised their hands.

"How about we do some introductions, then we can figure out where to go from there, OK?" Willow offered as a change of subject, blushing as it turned out only she, Xander, Devon and Kendra had been the only ones not to raise their hands.

"As I said earlier, my name is Willow Rosenberg," she then pointed at Iceman, "Xander Harris, Cordelia Chase, and Buffy Summers. Oh, and Kendra, who is visiting from out of town."

The band stood there for several long moments before finally, Oz, as the apparent leader, just sighed and nodded his head. He pointed at himself and simply said, "Oz. Wolverine."

Blinking in surprise at the monosyllabic response, Willow then paid attention to the others as they, one-by-one introduced themselves and who they dressed as. The boy in the yellow trench coat went next. "I'm Devon MacLeigh, lead singer and male vocal for the awesome rock and pop band "Dingoes Ate My Baby", and I picked up some cool looking red retro sunglasses and this stylin' coat from the costume shop... uh, and..." he scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment and near-mumbled the rest, "... and wound up becoming Jubilee of the X-Men and Generation X."

"Hunh," Buffy grunted, then replied, "I lost a bet."

The purple-haired girl went next, "My name is Danielle King, female vocal, which actually has gotten better since I picked up the accent. Anyway, as you've no doubt already guessed," she held up her still crackling energy blades, "I dressed up as the sometimes X-man Psylocke. Apparently the version that I dressed up as, was still a member of the England-based group/_Excalibur_/, which explains why I didn't get your radio summons."

The drummer stepped up, flapping his wings in demonstration as he told them, "My name is Adam Kennedy, and as you can tell I dressed up as the X-man Archangel, though it wasn't my intention at the time after slipping on the fake wings and spray-painting a halo on my shirt."

Which left the denim-clad pair, the redhead keyboardist and the cute brunette. "My name is Scott Cassidy, and this here is Kaitlyn Janeway. I'm on the keys, she's on base. And while I now have the vocals to take over as lead singer, in the interest of not killin' the audience, I'm sticking with what I know. I dressed up as Banshee from the X-men, and I got not only his powers, but all his knowledge about espionage and being with Interpol too. So best not be trying anything, eh boyo?"

"I dressed up as Shadow Cat," Kaitlyn softly told them all as she stood next to Scott.

"And you pretty much guessed who we dressed as already," Willow said. "Why don't we go back inside and talk about things, see where we stand and what you want to do or whatever. We won't force you to do anything, promise. And you have your own telepath to make sure that I don't try anything," she said this much more for the keyboardist's benefit.

"Fine," Oz growled, and then lead the way back inside.

/_Outside the Bronze_/

/_One Hour Later_/

He used to be the scrawny one. He used to be the weakling. He used to be made fun of and he was never allowed in there. He stared with pure hatred at the building known to all as the Bronze, and felt his muscles clench. His very, very big muscles.

He refused to be ignored any longer, refused to be cast aside anymore like he had been so far. He would make them listen to him and make them like him and then he'd finally be popular.

At first, after Halloween he'd been afraid of his new body, his powers, he'd hidden away to protect people from him. But day after day, he'd bit by bit lost his initial perspective as his powers both grew, and he slowly gained control over them. And with that control came understanding. The understanding that with power, his unstoppable power, came the right to to use it the way he wanted to use it, his way, however and whatever he wanted to do with it.

So that was exactly what he's gonna do.

/_Inside the Bronze_/

"So you're the ones who started up that HSL group?" Adam interrogated the X-Slayerettes.

"A bit unintentionally," Willow tried to explain, "But yeah, we got blamed for being the founding members. Probably because we were the first ones who had an explanation as to what and why it happened. After the Battle Royale, things just kind of fell into place after that. We've been recruiting new members everyday. And like I said, a lot of our members are no more than people that know the story and want nothing more than a little bit of safety and security. Although a few have theories of more... militaristic possibilities, for the large part we're encouraging the view that we're like an extended, supernatural neighborhood watch program."

"We've heard the spiel," Oz interrupted, "Doesn't explain why we got attacked by a couple of gargoyles and harpies, and then two Darth Vader wannabes with a guy in iron jacketed armor."

"Had a penchant for talking in third-person, green cape and was as much a Doctor Doom wannabe as the other two?" Xander put forth.

"Yeah," Oz nodded in agreement with the description.

Xander nodded back, "Can't say much about the first two, but the Trio, as they call themselves, we've had a couple of run ins with them. They don't tend to work without kiddie gloves, so when you take out the stops and start playing hardball, you can sometimes catch'em off guard and get them to retreat without actually crossing any lines."

"So you guys were already here at the Bronze during Halloween?" Buffy asked.

"Most of us," Oz answered.

"Uh, Scott and me were running a little late when . . . uh, when the . . . spell hit us," Kaitlyn told them, "We didn't have communicators or anything except the costumes and our mutant powers, and then we got attacked by..."

All of a sudden there was a loud crash from the entrance to the Bronze and it was almost like a bomb went off as debris exploded inwards, followed very shortly by the man that caused it in the first place. An eight foot muscled man in dark orange armor, including a domed helmet that left his eyes and mouth uncovered.

". . . the Juggernaut . . ." Kaitlyn finished in stunned shock.

"We are so fucked," Xander stated with morbid finality, only moments before the screaming started and everybody else in the crowd started running.

"Hey, where's everybody going? The party's only just getting started!" the mountain of mutant mystic might bellowed.

"No time," Buffy snapped. "Kaitlyn, Adam, Cordy, Willow. Get the people out. If anybody wants to stay and fight, tell them to stay out of his line of sight. Devon, Scott, Xander, you're with me on long range. Danielle, Oz, Kendra. /_AFTER_/ we get him to slow down enough, you'll be on close-combat. And if anybody has a problem with me telling you what to do, deal with it! Now MOVE!"

Everybody exploded into action at that, Buffy picking up and then throwing the table at the Juggernaut, which was sufficient to draw his attention away from the crowd. And onto them.

"We are /_so_/ fucked!" Xander insisted as he formed his ice armor and immediately formed a couple of Freeze Balls, not even bothering with warning as he threw both out. Unfortunately all they seemed to do was form a small bit of frost on his armor which quickly evaporated, doing next to no damage, if any at all.

Buffy followed up with a mild optic blast, again, not even enough to make him flinch. Juggernaut sneered at them and bellowed again, "That didn't even tickle. So, babe, you wanna dance? Fine by me. LET'S DANCE!!" Then he threw down his leg in a foot stomp, the shock waves and tremors knocking a lot of people to their knees, except for those that were flying, the Juggernaut, Buffy, Kendra, and Oz.

/_'Willow, get those people out of here!'_/ Buffy silently shouted through her psychic connection to the red haired telepath.

"We don't have time to be subtle," Willow suddenly shouted to the others on rescue duty. "We'll build it back later. Cordy, Adam, blow out the walls and get as many people out through the holes as you can!" Then she turned her own powers against the walls and even the ceiling to create holes big enough to fit almost a dozen people through at a time.

Xander and Buffy kept blasting the Juggernaut off and on, making him smirk and laugh, but it kept him from chasing after the crowd and within a few minutes, it was just the Juggernaut, the X-Slayerettes and the Dingoes.

"So, Slim," Oz addressed Buffy as it left them and the Juggernaut in the middle of the destruction of the teen dance club, "what's the plan?"

"Even if we wanted to, do you think we could kill him?" she asked. "We subdue him and get his helmet off so Willow and Danielle can put the whammy on him, then we deal with it from there. Got a problem with that/_Wolverine_/?"

"Nope."

"Good," Buffy put her shades away and let her anger fuel her power, her eyes lancing with crimson energy as she allowed it to build up more and more.

"Heh heh heh, think you're gonna hurt me now you little punks! I'm not the scrawny one anymore, I'M THE TOUGH GUY!!" With a yell the Juggernaut started to run full tilt towards the group. Buffy just let loose with a medium-level optic blast, which didn't even slow him down.

The floor suddenly turning to slick ice, however, did slip him up so he at least went off course and landed on his back after crashing into the one wall that didn't have any holes in it yet. Iceman got up, and uncharacteristic of the "real" Iceman, or the X-men in general, he started to pour on the ice beams covering the immobile form in an iceberg-sized frost.

"Uh, isn't that a bit overkill?" Kaitlyn questioned.

Buffy, her voice cold and hard, answered, "This is the Juggernaut we're fighting here. With him there doesn't even exist 'kill', let alone 'overkill'. Oz, Danielle, when he breaks out of that, do you think you can get his helmet off? We need to get that off him so Willow can put him to sleep."

"Do my best," Oz said as he unsheathed his claws with a loud /_schnikt_/.

"What he said," the purple-haired singer replied.

Together they approached the mountain of ice, and stopped several feet away when cracks began to appear all over it. The cracks continued for another few seconds before ultimately, it exploded in a shower of ice cubes and the Juggernaut got back to his feet.

"Brrrr. Now I need something to warm me back up," he bellowed at them. Then he caught sight of Danielle and smirked at her, "Yeah baby, you'll do nicely. Come to papa and warm me up."

"OK/_now_/ I want to hurt the blighter," she hissed, igniting her psi-blades.

Together the pair leaped at their foe, who reached up to catch them. An optic blast from Buffy knocked away the hand that would've grabbed Danielle, but the other hand, which was actually a fist, still wound up hitting Oz and knocking him, painfully, back to one of the far walls.

"Cordy, make sure you're wearing your gloves. You /_really_/ don't want to absorb anything from Juggernaut!" Willow warned her friend as she started to telekinetically hurl debris at the Juggernaut as a distraction.

Danielle danced around the armored titan, who seemed intent on grabbing her rather than punching her. Psylocke's ninja and acrobatic skills coming in real handy as she dodged his surprisingly quick frame. Kendra was there in a flash to help the mutant psychic out, but the first time she tried to punch the man in the back, where he wouldn't see her and dodge, she cried out in pain and pulled back either a sprained or broken hand, and the Juggernaut didn't even notice her until she screamed out loud.

"This isn't working!" Adam screamed at Buffy.

The mutant Slayer glanced around and then caught sight of Scott standing in shock next to Kaitlyn. An idea struck her and she shouted over at the two, who joined her for a quick powwow. After they were done, Kaitlyn vanished into the floor and Willow suddenly pulled Cordelia and Danielle back with silent telepathic commands.

"Aw, what's da matter?" Juggernaut teased in a baby voice. "Don't wanna play no more?"

"Nah, just thought we'd limit your options a little bit," Buffy sarcastically replied.

"Huh?"

At that moment, from the floorboards a single, slender hand rose up and latched onto the Juggernaut's ankles. A moment later he started to sink into the floor until all but his upper torso was submerged into the solid concrete floor.

"Hey, wait a second, I know this trick!" he bellowed out. "And those eye beams. The ice. You guys are the X-men!"

"Sort of," Buffy answered him. "We're the kids that were given the X-men's powers, same way you were given the Juggernaut's powers. On Halloween, right? We can help you..." She started to explain what had happened, but stopped when he suddenly started laughing out loud.

"You want to help me? You want to /_help_/ me?! BITCH! You can't even /_stop_/ me! I'm the /_Unstoppable Juggernaut_/!! RRAAAWWWWRRRR!!!!" With a mighty roar he ripped himself from the confinement of the floor and got to his feet.

"Now Scott," Buffy ordered, while covering her ears. An action everyone else, save the Juggernaut quickly mimicked.

Taking a deep breath, Scott stood right in front of the mystically empowered mutant and then he began to scream. At first it sounded like a jet engine starting up the turbines, then it sounded like a plane about to take off, and then just as the Juggernaut took his first steps, it began to reach the deafening sound levels of a military fighter jet hitting the afterburners while still on deck. About that same moment, anything that was in front of Scott and wasn't bolted down, and even a few things that /_were_/ bolted down, began to fly away after being shredded to pieces.

The Juggernaut tried to take a second step, but it took him about ten seconds to even place it down. As a result, Scott raised the level to the point where it didn't matter how much ear protection you had, you were hurting, and it took the Juggernaut over thirty seconds to take a third step. He also seemed to lose any interest in taking a forth as a look of strain filled his face and he raised his arms to cover where his ears would be, but because of his helmet, he couldn't reach them to cover them further.

Finally, having had enough, and being in genuine pain, albeit just an earache, the Juggernaut ripped off his own helmet to cover his ears with his own massive hands.

/_'NOW Willow!'_/ Buffy psychically ordered.

Without a moments hesitation, and ignoring the pain in her own ears, Willow turned her concentration on the Juggernaut's now-unprotected mind, and within seconds triggered the command to sleep, and reinforced it with everything she had. Seconds later, he finally collapsed to the floor, asleep. Only after that did Scott finally stop screaming, allowing his friends to uncover their ears.

"Well, that was fun," Oz commented, getting up from where he'd been slammed into the wall. "What do you guys do on Wednesday nights for an encore?"

"For some reason, all the really freaky stuff tends to happen on Tuesdays," Xander replied.

/_Watcher Zabuto's Apartment_/

/_Later that Night_/

"You understand the charges you are laying against Watcher Giles, don't you Watcher Zabuto?" the muffled voice spoke over the phone.

"I would not have made them if I did not understand them Sir Travers," the Jamaican Watcher answered into his line of the phone. "Watcher Giles has become complacent in my eyes. He allows his Slayer and her teenage American friends to dictate what they do, and he completely ignored my warnings about the signs."

"Yes, and as our conference call with Watcher Giles proved, he does have more experience with the Hellmouth and its happenings. According to his own reports, signs and portents of coming threats to humanity, not to mention the frequent demon attacks and vampires that populate the town, it is understandable, and forgivable as to his, while not outright dismissal, but rather a lack of panic on his part. Thankfully, it is not something you and your own Slayer have to deal with that often in your own home base."

"Yes sir, and I acknowledge that and I understand the reasoning for appearing to not immediately respond to my warnings," Zabuto spoke back, "Yet it does not refute the evidence of a lack of discipline and allowing teenage civilians to become so ingrained with the Slayer to be allowed to discuss matters of security and safety with Watchers... It is outrageous Sir Travers!"

"Wasn't it you, yourself Watcher Zabuto who made the observation that Watcher Giles and Slayer Summers need to, quote/unquote "gather an army of loyal followers to combat this coming threat" or something like that?"

"Yes sir..."

"Then I would say, given the glowing recommendations Watcher Giles reported on these teenagers, that she has gotten off to a marvelous start. However," Travers interrupted Zabuto before he could interrupt him. "Given the grave nature of the signs, and the wave of chaos that purged the planet originating from the Hellmouth, we are authorizing you and Slayer Kendra to remain on the Hellmouth and to aid Slayer Summers and Watcher Giles in guarding it from ever being overrun by demons. This does not make you his subordinate, nor he yours. You'll have to find someway to work together old boy. Make us proud."

With a heavy sigh, yet still much respect in his voice, Zabuto replied, "Yes sir."

Then the Watcher's Council hung up on him.

TBC...


End file.
